Who I Am
by Ivydoll
Summary: BakuraRyou, YamiYugi, RashidMalik. Ishtar threatens to destroy the world: only amnesiac Ryou has the ability to unlock the memories to stop him...
1. One

**(KAI)** Short chapters out of control.

* * *

**Who I Am  
1**

When his eyes opened again, he was grasped roughly by the shoulders, and shook. "What did you see? Where do we go from here?"

The hands pinched his skin and he gasped in surprise, then tried to jerk away from the young man with the wild violet eyes and sun-stained skin. He knew somehow how foreign from him the boy was, and yet very familiar.

"Let go! Let go of me!" he cried out, pulling again, and this time with one hand gripped into the sheets which rode around him on the bed he'd woken on. He tugged and tumbled as the violet-eyed boy lost his hold; falling to the floor haphazardly, his gaze now traveling quickly from one face to the next in the crowded room. They stared at him openly, with strange and confused expressions. He demanded then, "What's going on?"

A fierce looking man strode to him, his eyes sharp and dark red. It seemed wrong, and as this happened the boy shoved himself backward, until the man with sharp red eyes had to follow him to the wall. "Ryou," he said, with a voice that seemed full of things familiar, or perhaps not. Safety, maybe. The fierce man frightened him somehow, and as the man crouched down beside him, Ryou huddled against the wall further, and whimpered- feelings fluttered through his stomach and mixed with the fear. This name, this name the man said; what did it mean? He felt sick.

"Ryou?" and the man's hand was on his bare shoulder, fingers spread under the edges of straps- straps on a white robe, bunched around his middle; the gesture disarmed him with familiarity, and he trembled unhappily.

The young man with stained skin charged suddenly around the edge of the bed, his eyes wide and dilated to pupils which were only dark points, boring at him desperately. "Ryou-mah, what did you see? Please, please, Ryou-mah!" And he gripped his hands into the pale white arms.

He cried out, pain running from the places the young man's fingers held. "Stop! Stop it!" he shouted, shaking his head and kicking his legs uselessly. The fierce man hovered into his vision abruptly, white hair flashing, and shoved the strange boy away. "Get _back_, Malik!" the man growled, holding both arms around him protectively. His chest constricted painfully, looking up into the mad, red eyes. Who was this terrifying image? "Oh, _oh_," he moaned, holding his hands to his ears to block out the mad little voice in his head which wildly proclaimed the fierce man a mirror.

"_Yadonushi, Hikari,_" soothed the man in a hiss, even as he balked and tried to wriggle away from the warm hands and sweet, raspy voice.

"Baku-dah?" Malik whimpered, as the boy he'd grasped stared at him in terror, and at the others in fear, and held himself as though a captive; this was not right. Not good. "Ryou-mah is sick? Ryou-mah, Ryou-mah doesn't want my touching?" His voice was breaking, and a fine tremble began to work into his shoulders; the boy on the floor watched, horrified, as he struggled to understand what transpired around him. An older woman with long, dark hair swept up to the boy called Malik and rested her thin hand on his head. Ryou, filing away his name as though it might possibly become another, connected their complexions and assumed a family relationship; a chord struck him, between the tips of the woman's fingers and the crown of sand-blonde hair. It thrummed _insanity_. "Malik, dearest, become calm. We have somehow upset this maneuver... Ryou-"

"Ryou-mah is angry!" Malik cried, darting away from the woman furiously, "Ryou-mah... Isis-tah-sheri doesn't understand!"

"Isis," the fierce man hovering over him growled suddenly, "Take him somewhere until he calms!" He indicated the quaking boy on the floor, "Ryou is upset."

There were death threats in his eyes and his words, and Ryou let out a low moan of fear, lost and confused, and wishing he could remember the names and the faces that hovered around him, and most of all the beast of a man who was so soft with his touch. The boy Malik seemed taken aback, and stood wavering with his fists clenched before turning and running from the room, shoving past the other people crowded inside. The woman Isis hurried after without a backward look and Ryou was relieved.

Another dark man appeared abruptly in Ryou's peripheral vision, and he gave a start further into the embrace that held him, his forehead brushed by long, thick white hair. The man bowed, a long tail of hair knotted at the back of his head _swishing_ forward, "I will also attend to the young master." His voice was world-weary but affectionate and he held a book which Ryou instantly feared and caused him to hold at his own heart, pounding so wildly he didn't know if it would ever calm.

"Don't go far, Keeper, you will account for _this_," the man holding him snarled, and Ryou whimpered, a sense of the familiar hitting him again.

"Of course," he intoned, leaving the room to the remaining five standing.

"What's going on?" the boy wailed after a moment of dark silence, "Who was that crazy boy? And who are you people?" He huddled against the stranger's chest, trapped between a sensation of utter terror of the figure and the incredible attraction to the figure's presence. The figure held tight to him, and Ryou did not know if he felt safe or trapped, and almost cried with frustration, "Who are _you_?"

The figure looked down upon him with those strange red eyes, and they seemed sad, "You don't know who I am."

Tears broke away and Ryou whispered, "I don't know who _I_ am..."


	2. Two

**(KAI) **Ryou is my favorite, and yet- I do these things which are not very worthwhile. Shouldn't I make an effort?  
...Ah, please don't mind me.

* * *

**Who I Am  
2**

_Who I am. I wonder who that is? 'Ryou', they said. Why can't I remember anything? What happened while I was... sleeping?_ He did not know what else to call the state he had been in when he had opened his eyes, but he felt somehow uncomfortable about it. All those people watching him... What had been the meaning of that? Their presence deeply disturbed him, even as he sat alone, rubbing his cold upper arms where Malik had touched him. Malik. What in God's name was wrong with that boy?

Ryou glanced around the room once more, wondering whose it was- his? Maybe Malik's? Or someone else's? Or... maybe the fierce man's? Ryou blushed. The man's presence bothered him a great deal, also. A complete, but beautiful stranger, who had held him, and made him feel safe when his mind had been lost. Ryou covered his face in embarrassment of himself, _Sap, you don't know who he even is. He could be your relative._ But he had an inkling it wasn't true; he had another inkling that the fierce man- _Bakura_- was the closest to him even now, perhaps even directly outside the door, as the group of people waited outside the room for him. Whose house was this? Ryou frowned and held his knees close to his chest, a panic spreading through his ribs.

These feelings- feelings that were lost, and that he had lost something, and that the people around him could not be trusted, and that... in addition to _who_ he was, _where_ he was_, _and _what_ was going on, he had to discover _something he had forgotten._

Something... he had not known before... before...? He growled in frustration. Before what? What memory could serve him to explain _that_? God and Gods. Tears welled at his eyes as the feeling of loneliness washed over him mercilessly; nothing he looked at, or thought of, triggered anything in his mind. It was like opening a locked chest with a bit of hair.

A soft knock on the door snapped his head up, breaking him from his party of pity upon himself. "H-Hello?"

"Ryou," said a soft voice, one young and sweet, "Can we come in and talk?"

He wanted to run- throw the little lamp on the table at the door and tear away in the little confusion- and never look back. Horrible fear filled him at the voice, and then the voice knocked again and his mind wavered to a chamber, an incense strong and meditative filled his nose with scent, the voice called to him, but he could not answer. He saw a knife, flashing and cold, pretty silver sliding into flesh in the dream the incense gave. And then he could see again, and he was merely alone in the strange bedroom, with no more insight into his current circumstances than before, but with yet another strange, harrowing feeling that something _very bad_ was involved.

And then the door opened slowly, and a boy with wild, dyed hair entered, along with a man who exuded control and precision- power wrapped inside. Ryou shivered, and remembered the knife. The cold, cold knife.

His name was Yugi and they were friends from high school, a small boy with wide amethyst eyes began a short time later, when Ryou, shaking and suddenly cold, was joined in the bed by the stranger who was now quiet and withdrawn, and seemed more terrifying this way. He sat with him, upon the sheets, hovering protectively, but Ryou was too lost to know if he should trust this stranger or not; he was left with a strange feeling something had occurred to him before the time he opened his eyes; something dreadful. But he said nothing, and only tried to ignore it. If this person was his friend...

"This is Jounouchi Katsuya, Honda Hiroto, Mazaki Anzu, and... ahm, _mou hitori no boku_, Yami," a blush stained the small boy's cheeks at the last. Ryou smiled politely, still trembling and overwhelmed, and filed away the strange statement 'the other me' with a sense of remiss and confusion. The other people who had come back into the room nodded uncomfortably, or waved, and seemed to want to nothing to do with the entire situation. Or perhaps... _He_ was the source of _their_ remiss. Ryou frowned at this thought.

"And... my name is... Bakura Ryou?" Ryou whispered, the strength behind his voice seeming to flee whenever truly needed. He then translated a phrase he could suddenly recall sharply. King's property. "_Yadonushi?_ Landlord?" he turned to the man with the wild white hair, who appeared to be sulking, "Am I... a renter? Do I own apartments? Or..." His nose crinkled as he tried to fit this into a memory- any memory- that might surface, but nothing bit the bait he dangled in his mind. Yugi giggled fondly then, sitting down into a chair at the bed's side. Ryou felt his heart skip- the briefest flash of insight. "The man who was sitting there..."

Yugi nodded, "Rashid, he was the one taking care of Malik before Isis came back." The other members of the group hovered about in the room as if uncomfortable, but they were quiet and did not cause Ryou so much terror now that he was resting in the bed and given time to think. _I don't know anything about anything, not even who I am_, he reasoned, thinking of the man beside him, _so it's best to trust these people who are helping me. Even if,_ the thought hit him suddenly,_ they really have nothing to do with this._

This. What was _this_?

And as far as trusting the people around, he still had his reservations, though he tried to ignore them.

"I don't understand what's happening," he told the boy quietly, his skin shivering at the words, like an omen, "I don't remember who I am..." _So how do I know I can trust you?_

Yugi nodded, "I could tell you a million things. But..."

"But what is important now is not who you are, but who you were," the man who stood by Yugi's side intoned darkly, as though bored. He strode around Yugi and stood over Ryou. Yugi seemed sad, and folded his hands in his lap tightly, quiet and biting his lip. The man described as Yugi's 'other' shifted closer to him, and rested his hands on the boy's shoulders. They looked incredibly alike, with wild, dyed hair, faintly similar eyes. The colors? Like amethyst and rubies, somehow joined. It was disarming. He wondered after his own presence- what did this 'Bakura Ryou' person that he was look like? But the touch was also a fearful thing, and he began to quake beneath the touch. He felt... almost... unworthy... Like a peasant or a priest. A priest...! A priest... that was familiar...

Ryou blinked. Out of his peripheral vision, Ryou saw the shadowed man watching him beneath hooded eyes. He shivered.

"Who are you?" he whispered, in awe of the person above him. He looked up into the rubied eyes and felt old, felt lost. And then the room went black.

"I have to go," the girl suddenly said, and the blonde and brunette nodded with her. "We all have school tomorrow. You, too, Yugi."

Yugi shook his head and smiled, "I won't worry about that right now. I don't have the leisure."

Mazaki Anzu shrugged in disapproval and left the room, picking up a pink bag as she left. Jounouchi Katsuya and Honda Hiroto left shortly thereafter, Katsuya with an affectionate knuckle to Yugi's head.

Bakura entered the hallowed bedroom as Honda Hiroto brushed out, and settled himself in the kitchen chair they had brought into the room. "He's asleep now, too."

Yami nodded, a vision of Malik writhing in Rashid's arms brushing his memory and making him cringe, "Good."

Yugi looked from one man to the other in concern; they were still so cold to one another. He tightened his hand on Ryou's cold one, and sighed. The wounds of the past didn't seem as though they would ever heal. And poor Ryou, he rubbed his thumb against the translucent skin of Ryou's- struck with amnesia and overwhelmed beyond belief. He watched Yami resettle himself in his position on the corner of the desk, and smiled. Yami smiled back, but it was drawn.

The boy felt his heart ache- he knew why Yami was being so reserved. At a time like this... who could be relaxed, or happy? And Malik teetering further and further toward the abyss every day that passed... Yami would not be one to take it all impersonally. Once king, with the power to right all, now powerless and having to put all his faith and trust into a boy who could not believe his own name. Yugi knew his other half hated relinquishing control. He looked at Bakura, now watching Ryou sleep with dark, unblinking eyes. He was sure Bakura hated it, too.

But what could they do? Ishtar could very well succeed if Ryou did not regain his memory in time.

* * *

Incense. A strong smell. He can see the walls almost breathe with the fullness of the smell. The smoke is curling along the wood, brushing and touching and feeling. He wavers in the room, breathing deeply, and light-headed. A headache hovers behind his skull but does not venture nearer, and he finds himself leaning against the warped wood for support. Even as it breathes and swells, it is flat to the touch, but the whorls are swirling, and his eyes flutter open and closed without his control.

He sees more now. The smoke has cleared and he is standing in a palace. Glorious and gold, and there are many men and women, and a great pharaoh at the head. It is a strangeness. Something is off. Wrong. Ill. He watches as one after the other, the men and women approach the king, all slinking away afterward in failure. Some hold bags and bags of supply. He watches and does not think. It isn't his job to think. Only remember. Remember the smell of incense, and of wood.

They will sometimes use incense around the king, fly it in the air in a great array of scent and color, and some have herbs and drinks which have been tested, and which have been found un-poisonous. And some sing words, and dance and pray, and as the parade marches on the pharaoh grows anxious and tired and his face contorts in wrath.

Rubies sparkling, but the swirling is going away, and the smell is fading; the headache draws close but then evaporates as though never a threat. He is sitting on the floor, and there are ashes all around. Incense ashes and sticks burned down. Someone is coming in the room. He looks up slowly from their feet upward. He is weak and tired and glad to see this person. The king's priest is cold. He has had visions of him, and he fears the man terribly. But this priest is kind. She crouches down in front of him, and smiles, "How are we, then, child?" The priest tilts up his tired chin.

He nods, smiling sleepily. Slumps forward into the touch, and her arms are like a mother's. And now the priest calls for her new aide, who is tall and handsome and will carry him from the room. The aide looks into his dilated eyes and stoops to pet his hair. "How's our kid, eh? See anything special?" But he can't respond just yet and only crawls into the warmth of the aide's strong chest. Safe.

"Muu," he says softly and slurs, "Gol'... 'nd... ph... oh..."

The aide lifts him slowly, "Gold and Pharaoh?"

"Mmm," he nods slowly, limp, and waits for the haze to clear. Eventually, the haze will clear.


	3. Three

**(KAI)** Ah, third chapter. Does time pass so quickly?

* * *

**Who I Am  
3**

Ryou sat up slowly as soon as his eyes opened again. At first, he believed himself to be alone, and the notion filled him with dread. But then he saw the mound of hair resting on the edge of the bed, felt the pull of the boy who belonged to the head's hand on his own, and heard the protesting mewl which arose when he shifted.

"Ryou," a voice to his left said softly, drawing his attention to the man in the chair. Bakura's eyes were tired, and shadowy, and obscured by masses of argent hair, which appeared as far from combed as could be managed. "Hey."

It was a weak greeting, and Bakura grimaced, unsure of what to say. It infuriated him to stand on such feeble ground, and he rested his head in his hands, defeatedly. "_Hikari_, _Yadonushi_, my..."

Ryou strained to hear as the man trailed off into silence, and looked around to see the 'other self' of Yugi, now gently snuffling and shaking his head, but saw no one else in the room. So where had the man with the incredible presence gone? He sighed, rubbing his arms.

"Why do you call me those things? Landlord... Light?" he asked quietly, hoping not to disturb the tiny boy sleeping half on the edge of the bed and half in a desk chair. "I don't understand what you're meaning."

"_Hikari_, my light, it won't matter if you don't remember who you are," the saddest of expressions flitted across Bakura's sharp features, and were gone as soon as they could be noticed. Ryou felt the sad look did not have a place on Bakura's face, and that it was unnatural.

"But I _want_ to remember who I am!" Ryou hissed through his teeth, frustrated. "And... and I want to remember who _you_ are." He was not entirely sure about the latter, but it felt right.

Bakura smiled, a strange smirk which did not settle well in Ryou's stomach. "Come here."

An order. Ryou blinked and wondered at it; was he accustomed to receiving orders? Maybe so. Maybe because his legs began to obey even as he registered this thought, maybe because the command seemed to be in kind, and because it was coming from Bakura, who seemed to be... there. 'There' was the best word Ryou could come up with.

As he stood from the bed, the ceremonial dress pooled at his feet and _hushed_ against his calves coolly. Ceremonial. He re-thought this word. A ceremony? Was that was his... _sleep_ had been? Or... But at least it was a word he had derived from his own conscious. It felt good.

Bakura noticed the little smile that crept on Ryou's mouth and grinned like a dog. "Remember something?" Ryou found the expression truly halting, and frowned immediately.

"I don't know."

"Come closer," Bakura sighed, slouched forward in the borrowed kitchen chair, as if too tired to be concerned with himself. Ryou obeyed automatically, and was disconcerted at how his body so easily trusted the fierce man's commands before his lost and reserved intellect could even process 'why' he should obey, or trust, the command. The cool air prickled along his bare arms, and bore through the thin white material. Bakura stood up abruptly, now in the immediate space in front of Ryou's trembling frame. The boy stepped back, startled, and gasped when Bakura wrapped his bony hands around his upper arms possessively.

"Shh," he said, a dark color in his reddened eyes.

Ryou bit his lip and did not shriek out as he had planned to do. "What are you doing?" his voice shook, high and strained. Bakura smiled.

"Do you remember my face?"

Ryou peered up at the sharp features, at the fine eyebrows, and thick, bushy hair. The narrow eyes, and pale skin. He shook his head.

"Do you remember my voice?" Bakura whispered by Ryou's ear, drawing him nearer. The shivering which had plagued him since the beginning worsened exponentially, and he gasped quietly at the hot velvet of the sound hitting his eardrum, of the moist heat centimeters from his earlobe. "Mm...!" he tried to pull away slightly, but failed when Bakura's first arm held his head in place and second arm wrapped behind him and pressed his hips nearer than he felt was truly necessary. "N-No, I don't," he stuttered, pressing his hands against the man's chest to attempt recapturing his personal space. Although he felt he was exerting force enough to at least make his point clear, Bakura seemed not at all affected.

"Do you... remember my touch?" he was pressing Ryou against his chest then, unconcerned by Ryou's sharp intake of breath, and whimper of fear. But the struggle did not last long. Ryou quaked in the circle of Bakura's arms, and rested his head on the warmth being offered. He felt the man's arms tighten around his shoulders, and he could recall the mournful tone in the man's otherwise rasped and strong voice. He was resting his forehead on Ryou's shoulder, fingertips pressed into the boy's back needfully. "Do you remember?"

Heartbeat. Warm, quiet, breath, a brush of his own hair against his forehead. He saw the locks, and they were white, which was disconcerting but not so much as the feel of the man's chest against his hands, his cheek. He closed his eyes, felt as though he were swaying. _After the room_, he thought, _there is a bed where he puts me, and I sleep, but he does not always leave my side..._

"I... I remember," Ryou said slowly, "I remember this feeling."

Bakura's voice was strained, and he whispered, "Feeling, _Yadonushi?_"

Ryou closed his eyes again, and pressed his face into the cotton of Bakura's tee shirt, "You're carrying me. I don't know who you are, but you are carrying me."

Bakura let out a bark of a laugh which seemed caught between itself and a sob, and held Ryou tightly enough to prove to himself that he wasn't so far away as it seemed.

"He's awake," a deep voice broke into the room, snapping Yugi awake, and Ryou's eyes opened. That voice. He whirled around, out of Bakura's loosened arms, and cried, "The pharaoh!"


	4. Four

**(KAI)** Poor Malik...  
Mm... don't mind me.

* * *

**Who I Am  
4**

It was sometime after Yugi had lain his head down on the bed, sleepily smiling at him and yawning, when Yami chose to check on Malik. He had not heard anything unusual, per se, but the high tension in the room between the hostile Darks was nearly suffocating. He nodded his head civilly as he passed Bakura, just after slipping from the hard, wooden desk, but he was met with nothing, and considered that he could very easily kill Bakura if it were not for many circumstances.

As he made his way down the hall and down the stairs, he reflected on the dark idea. The tomb robber; the thief. He felt as though Bakura had committed some greater crime against him, and it was in this vein of thought that pained him to leave Yugi alone...

The living room was quiet; Isis was knitting patiently, perfectly unruffled and exuding elegance. On the couch, not surprsingly, was Rashid with Malik. The boy was curled in Rashid's lap, his face hidden. The man looked up at Yami, and smiled tiredly, "Ah, he comes."

"He is well?" Yami crossed his arms, and Isis did not look up from her scarf.

"He is asleep," Rashid responded, and Isis clenched her teeth.

"Do you know that he will be... cooperative, when he next awakes?" the former pharaoh blinked large, sharp eyes and Isis closed her own eyes tightly, her vision having clouded with tears.

"I know nothing," Rashid was stroking the boy's hair fondly. Quietly, Isis sobbed.

* * *

He longed to hold his Light in such a way. Yami stayed silent, watching. Bakura had somehow coaxed Ryou into his arms, and was holding him. Tightly. Ryou was shaking, but he was not afraid. Would Yugi be afraid if he were to sweep him up? Touch and hold, and claim. He clenched a fist. He took a deep breath- a sharp, jealous, hatred washing over him as he watched Bakura, clinging like a child to his Light, and as he thought of Ishtar. The two threatened his reality like fire threatened wheat. A reality with Yugi he could not have unless...

For that the world was never safe. For that people like Bakura and Ishtar existed.

To be honest, he hoped Malik might perish, too, if only for mercy's sake.

"So he's awake," he pushed his voice into the room, his black mood a present cloud around him.

Ryou whirled around, as though caught and as though in recollection, and before Yami could ask what the matter was, Ryou cried out, "The pharaoh!"

Yami blinked. Had Ryou experienced a revelation in his absence? Yugi looked up at him from his place on the edge of the bed, and promptly fell into that space in-between. Yami smiled and turned his attention back to the more important article of interest. "Ryou?"

"You were the pharaoh," Ryou breathed, "I saw you..."

And then Ryou's memory of the memory started and he backed away, back into Bakura's chest with a frown. Bakura's hands rested on his shoulders and he liked it. _But you were sick_. He chose to keep this information to himself, and waited for the events to unfold around him as they had a tendency to do.

"How is Malik?" Yugi had picked himself from the floor and made his way to Yami in an almost shy manner.

"He'll wake up soon. If he's stable when he does, we'll begin preparation for the trip," Yami looked Ryou in the eyes calmly, "You will have to undergo another regression."

The book. The chair. Ryou shook his head in fear, "No! I... I mean..."

Bakura was holding him again, and Ryou did not complain nor find it strange when he was facing the cold, cold stare of the man whom he now feared the most.

* * *

"Baku-dah! Baku-Baku-Baku-dah!" the boy sing-sang, holding onto Bakura's sharp shoulders and swinging merrily, "Baku-dah comes home, home for dinner!"

Isis was grateful when Bakura accepted his role again, as she was the Honored Sister, and he was the Father of Malik's madness. Secretly, though she discouraged her manic brother from using them, she enjoyed the play-along suffixes he had invented two months ago. She watched Malik then go to the frightened and uneasy Ryou, who was a greater catalyst than she had expected. Of course, she had also expected a future which did not even involve herself.

"Isis-tah-sheri," Malik caroled to her, taking her hand then and leading her to the kitchen, "You will prepare a meal for Baku-dah, and Ryou-mah." He had turned to Yugi, saying with a smile which might have been that of an innocent child's, "Yugi-sah and Yami-bah will help? Will help make Mah-Dah dinner time?"

Isis went with him, proud that she did not cry again, and weep on his shoulder in agony, even as her heart continued to ache and shred away, and Yugi had taken Yami's hand, too, with a patronizing and affectionate regard to the crazed teen. Isis was proud.

Ryou sat cautiously on the couch, not recognizing a single item in the living room except the tall man who had held the book, and sat in the chair, and made him _'sleep_._'_ Bakura settled in the chair Isis had had, and watched the party of 'siblings' parade from the room.

Ryou hated the man fiercely, so his position on the couch was calculated. He was tired of being in the dark. The dark was... _choking_. Rashid spoke first, watching Ryou's eyes work out the words he wanted to say. The questions he wanted to ask. There was no beginning or end.

"My name is Rashid. I am Malik's keeper."

Ryou flushed in embarrassment; the man had a deep, gentle tone which utterly transgressed what one might consider a voice appropriate for the loathed. "I think..." Ryou began slowly, "That asking 'what is going on' may be too broad. If I don't comprehend my own name..."

"Then where can you be comfortable?" Rashid smiled, remembering the boy before he had been stripped of his self. Quiet and sweet. "I can tell you of my young master, Malik. I can tell of Ishtar."

Ishtar. The name sent a shiver down his spine angrily, and he felt his neck prickle in horror. "Ishtar," he tried the name out for himself. It hurt.

"He was a fragment of Malik's soul. As a child, he experienced such agony as cannot be described, as to his body, then to his mind. He was ruined. And Ishtar was inside him after; more aware of Malik's destiny than any of us."

"Malik is... ruined?" Ryou did not want to express his confusion about who or what Ishtar really was, but it hurt him to feel his heart sway, knowing that _it_ knew the story, That it sympathized. _Sympathized._

"The child is lost in his mind," Rashid was sad, as though a loved one of his had died, "his name for you is 'Ryou-mah.' His suffix denotes you as his mother."

"Mother?" Ryou was shocked.

Rashid smiled in a way which made Ryou want to cry. Bakura was standing then, his gut too twisted with Ryou's frightened nothingness. After all he had gone through, after everything he had changed! _I would move the mountains for you. I would tear up the sea! _

"His father figure is Bakura, and his sister is the puzzle-child Yugi; his brother, Yami."

"'Sah', and... 'bah'...?" Ryou's head spun. _Just how manic was this guy?_

"Isis-tah-sheri is the Honored Sister, and I am... Rashid-vah, though I do not yet know to what it refers, 'vah'."

Rashid knew one more. He did not share it.

Then there was silence, and Ryou tried to sort out this first chunk of information about in his mind. It explained his behavior; if the guy was crazy, it couldn't get any more explained. And there was something he was forgetting. Ryou frowned, aware of how Rashid watched him, but was listening to the sounds of the kitchen; his brow knitted frustratedly as he tried to recollect every moment of his arrival into this situation, hoarding his thoughts and his feelings as though the memories they contained were more precious than gold. Gold.

"Gold and pharaoh," he murmured, remembering one of his new memories with eerie clarity. He sat back in the couch, his peripheral vision watching Bakura pace around the room like an agitated cat.

"I'm standing in a small room filling up with incense," he said slowly, quietly, trying to recapture the essence, meaning. "I start to get woozy, and then I black out. I... see things afterward. Like the pharaoh..."

Rashid looked intrigued, and Bakura stopped in his tirade on the carpet.

"I watch a whole room of people tend to him, and he gets angry. I wake up... and there's a... a priest," his eyes snapped open, "A priest who looks like Isis."

"A memory of the former you," Rashid said softly, knowing all of their roles in the ancient drama almost firsthand. "Miu-sher, the Oracle of The Gods."


	5. Five

**(KAI)** Your reviews- such incentive I recieve... how can I fail you, my love?  
..._Bitte schoen_... don't mind me.

* * *

**Who I Am  
5**

"M-Miu-sher? An oracle?" Ryou's heart skipped several beats, and he saw Bakura's eyes go wide.

"There are stories of you. Of the lives you've saved, and of the things you've prevented. Including the death of our king," Isis said as she strode into the room, carrying soup and sandwiches on a tray. Malik trailed behind her, happily munching his own sandwich. Yami was behind him, with the other tray in hand; unused to serving, he placed his charge of food to the coffee table Isis had chosen in the middle of the room. And everything was once again quiet.

As suddenly, Malik caught sight of Ryou and his face lit up as though he had seen his first sunrise, "Ryou-mah!" But his smile faltered, as though he could remember Ryou's past spurning of his affection. Ryou tensed, a strange, conscious feeling spreading through his chest. His heart was breaking.

So he smiled, and opened his arms, pleased when Malik's smile returned, if brighter, and hugged him fiercely. So he had done at least one thing right.

When Malik had gone, Ryou accepted the sandwich Bakura thrust upon him, then acutely aware of the gnawing pain in his stomach. He looked at Isis, unsure of what to say. But she had the same intuition of Ryou's plight as Rashid had, "The trances you underwent were famous. Not even the Oracle at Delphi could match your specific understanding of what you saw. You had Vision unparalleled. And you used that vision to save pharaoh Ahmose, those thousands of years ago."

"H-How do you know all of this?"

Isis smiled, sipped her soup. "There is a single scripture about you. It is not very detailed, but it says such things."

And there was silence for a good amount of time. Ryou finished his sandwich, and had some of the soup. He watched Yugi eat for a while, and admired the boy's smile. But he did not look at Yami for very long... he couldn't. And he watched Isis play a game with Malik, and Rashid watch. They seemed happy, but he knew better. Bakura shifted, stretching an arm around him, almost nervous and feeling strange for it. Ryou liked the attention, though he was not entirely sure why. But wasn't Bakura so warm? So comfortable? Yes. And his heart beat was so familiar, so strong. He began to relax; it wasn't long before Ryou's vision had gone black again.

* * *

This time... there is no incense, and he is being guided to the opulent building in which the king lives. He is giddy, because rarely does he see sights like this in real life; only in his dreams and in the room of incense. The king wanted to see him, so he is feeling quite special.

"Your name is Miu-sher?" the king intones, and it is a barely restrained note. But he is too flattered to have been called by his name by the great king to feel threatened. He looks Pharaoh Ahmose in the eyes and manages to whisper, because his voice has been damaged by the hours upon hours in the wooden room, "Yes, great sir."

The priest who has escorted him there is the priest with whom he is most familiar, the kind lady who draws his baths, too. She steps forward, and bows, and says, "Oracle of the Gods has bespoke you, he has seen you ail when no one knew you ailed."

The king seems angry at this, and his face darkens. But Miu-sher smiles, because he has seen the stress and terror of the king's childhood- and he sees the greater trouble, the unlocked power Miu-sher can not quite name. He sees a temper soothed, a rage calmed, and a tearing pain in the king's heart, which causes him such grief, mended by a child. And he sees the mother's damage controlled and healed by Hathor, great goddess in a boy's heart. He has seen this, and he is to tell the king.

"The nearest oasis," Miu-sher murmurs, his voice a delicate rasp, "is where your great sir will find peace."

Miu-sher does not know what the oasis is named, and for that, he does not know much else about his world. _Kemet_, the land that is black, is a mystery to him, but he does not mind, because he has helped someone today, and he will be treated to a new kind of fruit if the king is pleased. Miu-sher looks forward to it.

* * *

When Ryou opened his eyes, Bakura's arms tightened around him, and he let out a huffed sigh of air, which had previously resting in his lungs. Isis is the first to look at him, because everyone else had their eyes averted. Ryou suspects things have been said of him during his nap. Nap. Something important in there... very important...

"Ryou, you are well rested?" the woman asked, holding the book in her arms protectively.

He didn't want to, but Ryou nodded his head, and then Bakura was sitting up behind him, straightening him. The dressing was wrinkled, and as Bakura got up, he turned to straighten it on Ryou's thin frame- he thought it peculiar that he was wearing such a thing with no discernible sense of embarrassment. "She's asking if you're ready," he said thickly, "to try again."

"Try..." and he looked at Malik, sitting on Rashid's lap sadly, and at Yugi, who all at once seemed more paramount than before, and then to Isis. "I don't even know... what I'm supposed to be trying..."

She sat across from him, balanced on the edge of the coffee table. "We and Ishtar are in a race. The first to locate the Ptah Card determines the fate of the world."


	6. Six

**(KAI)** Six is good, but Seven is lucky.  
'Ptah' is said, 'tah.' Long 'a.'

* * *

**Who I Am  
6**

"All cards in the game Pegasus marketed were based on the stone tablets found in a temple. The temple was called that of 'Wedjir', and on the tablets were carved great beasts and demons. And sometimes, the essences of Gods. The powers of these beasts are often sealed in the images and names of the modern-day cards. But it is precious few who can use the game cards to summon such powers.

"The carved figures were those that were sealed into the tablets when they were exorcised from the bodies of the people who housed them. Having such powerful and dangerous _Kas_ was agreed to be a threat to human life, and that's why they were removed. Do you follow?"

Ryou nodded slowly, though he was struggling to understand.

Isis continued, "There was one _Ka_ that was greater than the rest. The essence of the God _Ptah_, the creator of all things. This _Ka_ had the power to create, destroy, or change the world in any fashion. and now the essence which was once sealed in a stone tablet... Is 'summon-able' through a card which Mister Crawford created. The location of this card is a secret, as was the location of the person who once housed the _Ka_."

"Why... why was the person hidden away after the... the _Ka_ was removed?" Ryou managed, sitting intently on the edge of his seat. Bakura was hovering behind the couch at that time, and Yugi had been appointed to baby-sit Malik in another part of the house. Yami sat quietly in the chair once knitted in by Isis, hunched over to cross his hands under his chin.

"He wasn't. The _Ka_ of that person was never meant to be released," she flipped through the old, terrible book until she found several scraps of papyrus scribbled upon. "According to the scriptures, he was hidden _while_ he housed the _Ka_. It was never meant to be released because it was feared the pharaoh would not be able to seal it once it had been exorcised."

"If the scripture says so much, why don't you know where to look for that damn card?" Bakura leaned over the back of the couch to leer at Isis accusingly, who was about to threaten his Hikari again with what was now his illness.

"Crawford hid the card," she said coolly, and Bakura growled unhappily.

Ryou closed his eyes, "So... There was a God in a human's body. They didn't want to exorcise the _Ka_ so they hid the person away. But... _why?_ Why hide that person?"

"To keep them from the thief king."

Bakura frowned then, as though that were somehow familiar. His memories were as faded as the light at midnight, but... thief king... that sounded familiar. He looked at Ryou, whose little hands were folded in his lap tightly, and who was too pale. It made Bakura afraid, then, finding such a phrase familiar. He glanced at Yami, who had been proclaimed the king of Egypt long, long ago. He himself had been trapped in an item of the age... And it forced him to again remember that he had played a part in this drama, too. He clenched his teeth. _I don't want to know...!_

"Thief king?" Ryou murmured, growing sleepy again.

"It was rumored then that the king of thieves had found out about the _Ptah Ka_, and wanted it for himself."

Rashid was standing, then, striding to clasp a hand on Isis' shoulder. "Time grows faint," he said deeply, and Ryou was cold. Very, very cold. "In this book I have the spell which imitates the trance you once underwent to send you to your deepest self. Here, your memories are kept, and your vision is strongest."

"Vision?" Ryou whispered, terrified at the prospect of being under the influence of a spell.

"Your second sight... sixth sense..." Isis stood to relinquish her place to Rashid. "It is suppressed in you by a barrier in your soul which you yourself created."

"W-Why?" Ryou sniffed, rubbing his eyes. _I don't want to do this!_ He cried out inside. Why give control of himself to other people? People he didn't entirely trust!

"To protect yourself," came Yami's voice, deep and troubled. His eyes held authority over this information. He knew the details of such things.

Rashid smiled, opening the book. Ryou's heart skipped. Such fear. "You do a great thing for us, Bakura Ryou," he said, "And I admire you. Your strength is incredible."

But Ryou didn't feel strong. Ryou felt unsure, and lost all over again. How could any of this be happening... be real? And he didn't know if he _wanted_ to see... After all... if _he_ had been the one to block away his own 'vision', wouldn't there have been a good reason? But there was no choice, there was no denying them what they wanted. His heart rate sped as he thought of the terrible image of Yami, and the half-constructed image of Bakura, and most of all the boy Malik, who seemed to need him. Was he needed?

Then maybe it was okay... or at least... at least he would try.

Ryou let out a whimper and nodded his head, now listening to the instructions Rashid was putting forth. Who was he to argue if the whole world needed him?

"I'm afraid," he whispered to Bakura as he reclined down upon the cushions, and Bakura leaned over the couch again and grabbed his hand, and it was warm to be held. Ryou closed his eyes tightly. What if something went wrong again? He didn't even know what to do...

"It is all right," Rashid said calmly, intuitively, resting a hand on Ryou's forehead comfortingly, "I will guide you, you need not be afraid."

Ryou knew his eyes were watering, and he saw Yami grab a blanket from the love seat he had shared with Yugi during dinner. It was red and it was warm. But Ryou began to shake, and tears were running down his face. Rashid began to say a prayer in an old Egyptian dialect, and Isis was telling him to relax and become calm, and she was petting his hair. Bakura touched his cheeks, tried to dry the tears, and whispered, "_Yadonushi_, I am here..."

Ryou smiled as his muscles went lax, and his eyes began to dim. He knew suddenly... what a funny and precious thing it was to hear from Bakura. _I am here_.

I am here... _for you_.

* * *

"Yugi-sah..." his little voice was still raspy, still tinted with swirling darkness. "Ryou-mah... is sick? Ryou-mah will get better."

The teen blinked at the choice of words, at how innocently Malik traced red and blue into the lines of his new coloring book. He turned his purpled eyes downward and chewed the edge of his green pen. _Sick_, he mused. "Ryou has amnesia, Malik. It means his memories are locked up."

"Like a treasure chest," Malik smiled, gazing at Yugi affectionately. He liked Yugi's hair, and the way his clothes felt.

"Yes, like a treasure chest," Yugi continued his page deftly, not caring for it terribly, "except... I wish we knew what kind of key we needed..." And then he said almost under-his-breath, "Or why we need a key at all..."

Malik did not notice, and began to hum. His babysitter sighed, which also went unnoticed. Yugi found it terribly unfair that he had been pinned with making sure Malik did not get into trouble, nor hurt himself of anyone else, which he was capable of doing if not carefully monitored and coddled. _I wonder when he got so bad he snapped like this, I wonder... what Ishtar did to him,_ Yugi watched the younger-but-annoyingly-taller teen under his eyes. Yes... a bit younger and not by much. But this was a minor point on Yugi's list of Things Which Were Terribly Aggravating.

For instance, there was also Ryou, Ishtar, and Yami. He sighed. The one was a bother because amnesia was the last thing which he needed to witness in his friends after so he had already had to suffer through so much. And exactly what had caused this sudden loss of self? When Ryou had closed his eyes he had been Ryou, however stressed, and when he'd opened those same brown eyes, he had completely lost everything. _Including the possible location of Pegasus' Ptah card,_ he thought selfishly. _But... I do wonder what he saw that made him... flip out like that..._

And of course... Ishtar. Ishtar who had hurt Malik, and who had hurt countless others. If he found the card before they did... and time was running out... Yugi shut his eyes tightly. He did not want to consider what sort of world Ishtar would create. He looked at Malik. What was the opposite of pure, childish innocence? Yugi often wondered also what was really going on behind Malik's violet eyes, because sometimes he doubted the true extent of Ishtar's damage. No- he doubted that Malik was lost. Malik looked up then, somehow aware of Yugi's eyes, and smiled.

Yugi smiled back. He believed the real Malik was hiding somewhere. He believed that Malik to be hiding from the tortures of his darkness Ishtar, and might even surface if Ishtar would gone... What would it take for that to happen?

Yami could do it, he bet, childishly smiling to himself. "Yugi-sah is happy, is going to town," Malik sang quietly, coloring a pumpkin bright purple, "To town... to see Yami-bah... Little sister is going to die..."

Paling, Yugi sat erect, his fears doubling on themselves like a tsunami.


	7. Seven

**(KAI)** Let's talk about names:

Japanese-Egyptian:

**Ryou**: Miu-Sher (pronounced 'mew-share'), "little kitten."  
Because I love how it sounds.

**Bakura**: Nakhti ('nah-k-ti'), couldn't find a meaning.  
Because of a fan-art site that mislead me. The name just stuck.

**Yugi**: Ini-heret ('inni-heh-ret'), "one who brings back the distant one."  
Because it suits him in the story's plot. And I like it.

**Yami**: Ahmose ('ah-mo-seh'), couldn't find a meaning.  
Because Ahmose the Great was grand, and because of that fan-art site. I know it's Atemu, really.

**Malik**: Namu ('nah-muu'), couldn't find a meaning.  
Because that's what Malik called himself.

**Ishtar**: n/a ('ish-tarr'), couldn't find a meaning.  
Because it was more attractive than 'Marik'.

**Isis**: n/a ('eye-ssis'), "supreme goddess."  
Because that's her name.

**Rashid**: Odion. ('rah-sheed'), "wise advisor."  
Because it worked out very well that way.

* * *

**Who I Am  
7**

It is sunrise. Nakhti is smoking blue incense through his room as silently as the light spreading through _Kemet_. "Ah, he awakens," the aide says softly to Miu-sher, who sits up and blushes. Nakhti has been with him for six months, a shorter time than many of the priests and priestesses with whom he is familiar, and who take care of him, but he feels so close to the assistant, so comfortable, and yet shy. The sun moves through the room slowly, teasing the curtains to cast pale across Nakhti's nude upper body. Miu-sher blushes more deeply, pulling at the cloth of his white dressings.

"I had a dream last night..."

"Oh?" Nakhti lights a new incense and mounts it in a wall sconce, fighting the urge to cough. He has wondered why the boy is subject to so much smoke, and has determined it may be to keep him in some sort of stupor, perhaps closer to the vision of his third eye. Still, he wonders on occasion, what the boy's voice would be like, how sweet it may sound, if not ravaged by a lifetime of smoke and incense. The soft rasp, lungs threatening to collapse, is so kind, though, and Nakhti cannot help but be piteous of him. Affectionate.

"The king is in the bath... the boy from the oasis is washing his back. There's a cat on a statue of Hathor," Miu-sher pauses, recollecting the next phase of his dream, "Then I saw... I saw a priest, and he was hunting the streets. There was so much dust."

Nakhti halts in his washing of the room, a daily chore which serves nearly no purpose, save that it gives him excuse to see dear Miu-sher, when he wakes. When he smiles. Now, Miu-sher is not smiling, nor is the sweet pinkpale blush that so often spreads visible. Miu-sher is staring intently into the folds of his sheer robes, as it pools in his lap, the soft, expensive cotton like the folds of time. "I-I think he is hunting people."

"Shall I make of this a note? Is this prophecy?" For the aide must be a scribe as well as a maid, and an errand slave, and still more. Nakhti wrings his hands in the kilted dressing, knotted at the waist and good for scrubbing, and waits for Miu-sher to nod, to close his eyes to remember. Miu-sher knows much of blindness.

As the aide leaves for his inks and papyrus, the delicate oracle frowns, and touches his own cheek. Under the eyes and down, where Nakhti's scar is, where it is twice crossed, where Miu-sher has never touched. And then his companion returns, sits, and waits. He has learned incredible patience from the boy who reclines in the straw mat, on its low wooden frame; who will speak and then not speak, for sticks at a time. Burning, burning, they go, and Nakhti must have patience, waiting for the oracle's dreams to collect together, like droplets.

Nakhti is glad, then, that he is in charge only of taking down the boy's dreams, and not his trances in the little stone building, in the courtyard, facing the east, all scattered with yellow dry-flowers. Isis is one of the few people he admires...

"A blue-eyed priest on beast's back... he takes prisoners from little towns, from cities near him, and returns with them... to... the king's property," Miu-sher seems to consider this for a time, long after Nakhti has stopped scratching characters to paper, "And then... he removes their souls."

Nakhti's heart freezes in his chest, though it still beats, and he does not choke or appear disturbed as he repeats, "Their souls?"

"No... their spirits. _Ka_," Miu-sher says again, thinking it a better word, "And the _Ka_ go in stones, and the stones are... for the king, but the king... I see him..."

Ten minutes later, Miu-sher whispers, "The king says, 'no'..."

Nakhti frowns deeply, writing- this is the dreaming he has waited for. Tales of the _Ka_ sealings had stretched far and wide, and to his village, little more than half a year ago. They had been sparse, but now... The white oracle of _Kemet_, had prophesied the Theban priest Seth on a man-hunt. Nakhti watched Miu-sher lean against the wall, gathering the few thoughts he had left. What a sweet child, who knew so little and saw so much. What did he know even of the man who watched him dream at night?

The man whose life had been stolen by Seth's ambitions; by a raid on Kul Elna, brought burning to the ground in search of the _Kas_. Irony that he alone was possessed of one, and he alone had survived.

"He is looking for _Kas_ which are... Gods," Miu-sher's eyes went wide, "Oh, he'll kill someone! I see him now!"

And Miu-sher is breathing heavily now, is vacant of expression as his hands clamp over his ears, "A boy, _Ptah_! Nakhti, _Nakhti!_"

It was a shriek for help, and even as Nakhti is stumbling over his flying thoughts, trying to organize in 'god _Kas'_, a 'boy', and the great creator god '_Ptah'_, he is struggling to his feet, crashing into the bedside, and roughly grasping Miu-sher to him, tightly. Miu-sher shakes his head, whimpers and cries, and presses his head beneath Nakhti's chin, where there is some safety from himself. Some safety from the endless barrage of images, from the never-ending tirade of other people, other journeys, other memories.

"Nakhti," he moans, tears rolling in fat drops down his round, baby cheeks, "make it stop... please make it stop...!"

"I can't," the white-haired assistant mumbles gruffly, rubbing his palm into the back of Miu-sher's dressing, because he hates to and because he will. "Stop crying, Miu-sher," he says into pale hair, because he hates the tears and because he can't stop them.

"Th-there is more, Nakhti," the boy whispers tearfully, his mind showing him what he does not wish to see, "A man in a red cloak... he- he...he's going to kill the priest!"

Like a northern stream in winter, Nakhti froze.

* * *

He woke with a start, as though his blood had gone cold, and tears were tracking down his face at a startling pace. "Nakhti-!" he shouted, throwing his body forward in shock. Bakura caught him in rough hands; hands which were still unaccustomed to gentleness. "Ryou?"

He glared at Isis and Rashid, who watched the boy shudder and heave on the couch almost clinically. Rashid's expression softened, and he stood up. "I will bring him a cup of tea."

"God, fuck you," Bakura hissed between his teeth, his heart pounding too harshly for having heard the name Ryou had called to. Isis looked away, unable to keep her gaze level on the boy's suffering. Three months ago, during the shift, Ryou had been there for Malik, for the entire month before Ishtar was ripped apart from her little brother. Ryou was like an annex. A part of her own family. Yet the resentment and guilt were un-exorcisable from her; resentment to Ryou for failing them in this way, and guilt for feeling in such a way. And where was Malik now? Coloring like a four-year old upstairs. Quietly, she excused herself, and left the house. A deep breath of fresh air. That was all she needed. Just to not be in the same room as those cold, cold brown eyes Bakura flashed at her, merciless.

Yami stood up abruptly, as if he had been called, and he left the room with a look of concern and pain. Bakura watched him, hatred flaring, for reasons and for no reason. And then Ryou let out one long, shuddering breath and he could not hold on to his anger. The shift had changed a lot. In one motion, Bakura leapt over the back of the couch and slid behind Ryou's quivering back.

Without looking, Ryou murmured, "I don't want to go back, I don't want to know..."

Bakura pulled the boy back, wrapped his arms around him possessively. There hadn't been enough time; the shift had come and gone, and before the relationship Ryou had begun with him had time enough to move forward, Ishtar had become a threat. And Ryou had been so brave, Bakura pressed his face into the soft, albicant waves of Ryou's hair, and hurt to see how Ryou had been punished for that threat.

"I love you," he said as softly as he could, because he needed to say it out loud, and because Ryou was crying, and he hated the tears so much.


	8. Eight

**(KAI)** And ED has told me:  
"'Ishtar' comes from the name of the Babylonian goddess of love/sex/fertility and war. So Ishtar is basically the whore of Babylon, which might explain the YGO version's tongueplay..."  
I love you.

* * *

**Who I Am  
8**

_Yami! Yami!_ Yugi rubbed his eye furiously, smiling at Malik widely, and fervently hoping the half-mad young boy did not notice the fearful tear prickling at his wide, lavender eyes. _Yami, please come up here!_ He continued shouting along the link they still shared, though the shift had not guaranteed it would still be there. Yami would come soon; soon, and Yugi was breathing too quickly, Malik's words echoing loudly between his thoughts. _Yami, please._

Too light to be loud, Yami stepped quietly into the room, his bright eyes almost angry. Waves were coming from Yugi, and they were oceans of unhappy. "Yugi?" he closed the door behind him, clicking it softly, and looking carefully around. And around, and to the side, and Yugi appeared from the corner and threw himself at Yami with unrestrained relief. He was not crying, but he might have.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, holding on to the hard curves of Yami's back needfully, "I just..."

He dropped his voice to the barest of airs, "...don't want to be alone with him."

Yami watched the room with emperor eyes, like a falcon. Claws. And Malik was, unconcernedly, coloring at the table they'd drug into the office room, which once upon a time had been his mother's sewing place. Once upon a time. The former pharaoh frowned deeply, a possessive anger itching in the back of his spine. Perhaps if he had been king in this time, upsetting Yugi would be a crime punishable by death. Perhaps. "What did he do?" he said darkly, resting his hand on Yugi's soft, baby round shoulder; the layer of padding the bane of a short person who loves fast food. Somehow, Yami is all angles, though. Yugi hates his round parts, and admires his other half's amazing body. These are not things he has shared, and it hurts him so. Still, Yami hurts him far more than he can hurt himself.

"H-He didn't do anything, I mean, he said," Yugi gulped, worrying his lip, "He said I was going to die!"

* * *

"I feel this," Ryou said slowly, hyper aware of the stranger's arms around him, "Who _are _you?"

"My name is Bakura, _Yadonushi_," his arms tighten. Ryou bit his lip, raising his hands up to his ears.

"I'm holding my hands like this, like I don't want to hear something. Na... Nakhti? Nakhti is holding me, like this," he leaned against Bakura, feeling strangely sorrowful. "I know him, but I don't know you."

"Who is he?" Bakura asked, checking a snarl and hating himself for it, for damn, weak little Ryou and the tremendous care he had for the boy; hating the name Ryou had uttered as though it were a snake, poisonous and crawling underneath.

"A lot like you," Ryou said before he could help it, and he blushes because this was a foolish thing to say to the overly 'touchy' stranger and far too personal to say so casually. But Bakura is pressing his nose into Ryou's hair, and Ryou can't help but to like it very much. "When I am alone in these dreams, he has been there."

"What else do you see?" Bakura mumbled, remembering and now knowing the name- it has been so long since he had heard it last- thinking ahead, and thinking that the group will want to hear.

"I have seen... a king, and... a priestess... and y-Nakhti..." Ryou closed his eyes, the sharp, sharp edge of a knife cutting his memories like a flash. He moaned, as though the pain were real, and whimpers, "Baku... ra... Someone... someone...!"

But the memory vanished before Ryou could sink claw into it. And he cursed under his breath, gripping the man's arm and feeling a headache spike between his eyes.

Malik laughed, touched his forehead, "Ryou-mah is sick? Ryou-mah will get better."

Startled, Ryou scrambled up, a hot heat flushing across his nose. "Ah, Ma-Malik, you are, you, hello-"

Yami led Yugi around the corner, an arm around his shoulders, firmly, possessively, and Yugi looked at one exalted and at another, miserable. "Ryou, how are you?" he asked, because Yugi is sweet like that.

"A-All right. We were trying to collect... my memories," he folded himself primly on the couch's middle and watched the remarkably similar young men sit together nearby.

On a cue he had been waiting for, Rashid re-entered, slipping a small white tea cup into Ryou's pale hands, and turning to face the group. "I've finished making the arrangements. On this one assumption we go to Egypt, and pray that Ryou's recent revelations are pointing correctly."

He turned again and met the boy's eyes levelly, "It should be best to concentrate now on the exact location of _Ptah_. I will take control of your body's search for its soul, Ryou, if I can."

More trances. That's what he meant. Ryou cringed, heat spreading across his nose. "All right."

And Isis, looking downward, closed the front door behind her, catching the last strains of that soft conversation. Malik rushed to her, "Isis-tah-sheri! We are Egypt-going, going, going...!" He danced, grabbing her arm, but she could not bring herself to smile. Yugi's concerned and frightened eyes burnt into her. Like the sun.

* * *

The sun scorched through his wrappings. He smiled. Ever closer, yet, rather far away, and he could feel the other half of his soul, oh-so-faintly.

_Little Malik_, it hushed, stroking the memory with a deep, crimson affection. _You are the only one._

The figure trudged on, heading for the oasis, the temple, the courtyard, and the buried secret. Yellow flowers haunted his scents lowly, beneath his noticing, and he drank.

_Little Malik, you are the only one, the only one that I would change the world for._


	9. Nine

**(KAI) **Quality?

* * *

**Who I Am  
9**

Ryou watched with wide, absorbing eyes as the few other commuters and staff moved hurriedly through the airport terminal, almost never glancing at the circle of chairs he and the other six travelers occupied. Things like this worried him; airplanes and bedrooms, sandwiches and books. He knew what they were, and why. He knew the sky was blue and grass was green and cars went very fast don't jump in front of them or you'll die, but the important things- his favorite color, his shoe size, his name, whether or not the jeans and tee shirt he'd been supplied with were his- those things weren't forthcoming.

And he had begun to wonder if he was actually just running around in wild circles with a small cult who was taking him to Egypt to sacrifice him to whatever mother ship they may have thought was coming. Of course, it was a weaker theory than the rest of what he'd been told... compared to the warm body that never left his side for long, the cult theory was highly unsavory.

At the moment Ryou pondered this, Yugi came back from the snack dispensers and nervously handed out the requested sodas and treats. "Plane's leaving in one hour, everyone..."

Ryou accepted his portion and watched the other planes leave in the dark twilight outside; it would be close to midnight by the time they got to the next terminal, in Egypt. Egypt... the word rolled about in Ryou's subconscious gently, purring against his lost memories in an infuriating manner. Then he watched Yugi sit by the chair Yami occupied intensely; the former king seemed distant, and held his chin in his hand as he regarded the planes one by one. Isis knit, Rashid read. Malik was bouncing around the lobby asking questions and bothering the staff people. With a sigh, he curled his legs up to his chest and ripped open the bag of chips; it would be a long hour.

* * *

He buckled in. Bakura settled in beside him, looking fatigued and miserable, in the seats around him, the rest settled and his heart sped not for the first time that day. Behind him; Rashid began quietly telling him of the next trance which they would do, which was considerably more intense than the last forced entrance to his mind, and of course more driven than the dreams... and he leaned his head against Bakura's tense shoulders, watching Yugi nervously twitch his foot back and forth, and bite his fingernails.

"Stop that," Yami whispered tiredly, batting the tiny hand down and admonishing Yugi with dark, strong eyes. The smaller frowned into a pretty pout and then bit his lip, nervously raking his fingers up his neck and shoulders, the foot swinging back twice as quickly as the jet prepped its engines with a quiet roar.

His eyes were watering up with tears, and Yami, always so full of grace, awkwardly put an arm around Yugi's rounded little shoulders. Ryou smiled drowsily, enjoying the show of affection despite himself. "They've been like that since the split," Bakura said nonchalantly, picking up the magazine resting in the seat ahead.

Ryou watched the magazine open as if intoxicated. His body's exhaustion was playing about on him, like a cold. "Split? I've... heard that before... at Yugi's house?"

The man laughed low, under his breath and coldly, and Ryou almost didn't like it, save that it felt so familiar he wanted to hear more, "Three months ago... Three months ago they shared a body. You and I shared one, too."

The boy sat up abruptly, "What?"

"_Yadonushi_," his frown was deep, "When your memories return, you'll understand."

"I want to understand _now_," Ryou said impatiently, one hand tangling onto Bakura's warm arm and staying there.

A small, guttural laugh, and Bakura set the magazine down. He felt as incredibly out of character as Ryou would occasionally act. "You won't believe me."

"Why not?" the boy looked small and innocent, gazing up at him through sooty eyelashes, and Bakura sighed agitatedly.

"He and I," he gestured vaguely to Yami, who was staring obtusely ahead, looking as concerned about flying as Yugi had, "Once lived in Egypt. I... don't remember much anymore. There was just darkness until you. We think he may have been king, but our memories... they're faded."

"Lost? Like mine...?" Ryou looked so unbelievably sad, that he wound one arm around the thin shoulders and squeezed them and the shy, almost happy look Ryou acquired was all too alluring, and made Bakura nearly sad; those looks had been so frequent before this fiasco.

"No... faded," he said softly, "I don't know if they can be brought back like yours."

Ryou leaned his head against Bakura's chest and liked its familiarity; vaguely, he wondered just how close they'd been at one time. He could almost hear the buzz of the airline attendants giving instructions, but his focus stayed unerring from the gravelly mumble Bakura sent to him. "Our souls were trapped in objects, and when you and Yugi got hold of them, we joined your bodies. A lot happened in that time... I did... terrible things... for you, and for... the memories I did have."

"I'm sorry," Ryou whispered, fidgeting with the cloth of the man's hem. An overwhelming sadness was filling him up, and a tiredness.

"When we last went to Egypt, there was a ceremony, and it... it almost killed you."

The boy tensed, the jet engine thrumming loudly to life, threatening soon to make conversation difficult. "And... the ceremony? It gave you your own body? And gave Yami his?"

"Strange magic," Bakura hissed, the flight beginning, "Like the _Ptah_..."

The plane lurched; Yugi let out another gasp, and Ryou watched numbly as Yami's eyes flickered to the side. This had happened twice before, and Ryou had finally begun to feel sleepy.

"You're most open when you sleep, it seems," Rashid had intoned when Ryou had confided in him of the dreams and the half-felt inklings. So when he did sleep, when his eyes did close, Bakura, who growled and frowned when such things were introduced to him, would give a signal, and Rashid would quietly direct his dreaming.

"And... you'll find... the memory?" Ryou had asked, watching a large grey duffel bag move through claims.

"You will. You'll nearly re-experience the vision, the vision you had as an oracle."

"It'll be okay," Yugi had smiled, pulling Yami through the first gate though the tired lines around his large, frightened violet eyes said he'd rather be anywhere else.

Fear. It was everywhere, even in the heartbeat Ryou felt in Bakura's wiry chest; but was it Bakura's fear or his? Times still came when the glint in the close man's eyes put a strain in Ryou's heart...

"Miu-Sher," Bakura whispered, Rashid beginning to chant, and half-wished the boy wouldn't see anything at all.


	10. Ten

**(KAI)** I had to write this with an _on-screen keyboard_.**  
Hikau-Khasut **= Proper name for the **Hyksos** that were invading Egypt around the 18th Dynasty, i.e.- 1500 bc roundabout.

* * *

**Who I Am  
10**

He sits outside and lets a stick of incense burn low to the ground; he has left Miu-sher to a deep, exhausted sleep, and now waits for the right time. The sun is half-risen above the taller trees of the oasis, and he watches Isis, the head-priestess, direct several other priests, priestesses, and shrine maidens to duty.

The spectacle does not hold his attention long. He has known the man by name. The man in the palace whose face will match the face which torched his home. Years ago, he had not known of _Kas._ He had known nothing of dark games. Before Namu, he had made his living as a thief believing his mother, father, and childhood friends had been killed by the Hikau-Khasut.

Namu knew; he knew of fire and death and of the dark games, for his parents had once been officials, then exiled, who would speak of such things. And when Namu, whose sandy hair and cool, dark skin enticed but never touched Nakhti, parted with him to Heliopolis, he said, "The oracle at Kurkur is famed for his beauty and vision..."

Namu was only fifteen, and beautiful, too; "You could go to him."

"What good will that do?" Nakhti had demanded, frustrated and cold inside at the idea of losing Namu to the city of the sun.

"He could help you... He could see Seth, if you asked him, and you could use that... somehow."

Vengeance burned behind his wide, violet eyes, and they were hard and wished far worse things than death on the priest. Nakhti looked away, and Namu embraced him, leaving.

And here at last, Miu-sher had seen the crazed priest's most recent hunting ground- Wedjir.

The long months of infiltrating, waiting, and planning had come together; with the dark priest's true location revealed, as only an Oracle would be able to see it, was his.

Now, there was the matter of leaving Miu-sher. Which should have been simpler than it was.

* * *

"Nakhti?" he opens his blurry eyes, puffy from crying and reddened, and calls again. Isis enters and lays down the boy's breakfast with a warm smile.

"Nakhti tells me you've had a bad dream," she cooed, cutting an apple.

Miu-sher shook his head, "No... not... _really_..."

"Pray say so?"

"I... dreamt," and Miu-Sher coughed, "of the king well and the priest... Oh..."

"_Pa-sheri_?" she said, using the affectionate term with an ease and motherly love.

"He was taking spirits from people, and putting them in stones in a secret place. I don't understand... but I saw a boy... an... an _important_ boy attacked by him! Oh, Isis, what if he's killed?"

"You can do nothing of such things, my dear," she touched his hand, "Nor can anyone."

And Miu-sher cried a bit a more.

* * *

He had played the part perfectly. Because he was not a noble, he could not see the boy as a wealthy man seeking advice. Because the rumors of the thief king had been circulating he could not directly approach the child about the matters of the high priests or the king. So, he had become a recruit, and though it disgusted him, he had done well. He had not made a single mistake. Patience... and whispering into Miu-sher's dreams had finally produced a result...

He had succeeded!

But... _damned_ if he hadn't planned Miu-sher. Hadn't planned the large, green eyes, or the small, soft hands, the voice which touched him where he'd gone cold years ago, searching for his village's murderer. But Miu-sher had told him where the secret temple was, and he had to search and wait no longer.

But, _Miu-sher_.

* * *

He watches tiredly as the sun sets at last, idly playing with a lock of his own, thick, bleached hair. The sun sets beside a three-quarter moon, and Miu-sher shudders to think of the moon that hung over the boy the dark-looking priest hunted. That moon will come soon.

"Miu-sher?" Nakhti will leave soon, he has decided, and he has an understanding of death about him, "Are you awake?"

"Nakhti!" Miu-sher coughs out the name, excited, "please c-come in!"

"I've brought your dinner."

The boy eats quietly, half asleep but thrilling at Nakhti's unprecedented arrival. He stops half-way, the butterflies in his abdomen upsetting his stomach. The color in his cheeks returns, and he tries to look at Nakhti, sitting nearby, looking through a scroll he has brought, but he continually looks away, shy and embarrassed.

"Miu-sher?" Nakhti, thinking of how he will never see the boy again, moves over, going to touch the boy's forehead gently. One can be but gentle, only soft, for it seems as though the famed oracle child of Kurkur might very well break.

"Nakhti, please-"

The man looks down at him, admiring the soft curve of his collarbones as they rest under the thin bed cloth.

"For a moment... won't you... No, please, never mind," and Miu-sher draws up, face flushed hot with embarrassment.

"I would," Nakhti touches the boy's cheek, softly brushing away a stray bit of coarse, fluffy hair, "do most anything you asked, Miu-sher."

"Would you hold me... as you... hold me when you fetch me... from the wood room?"

Slowly, Nakhti bundles the boy against his chest and coos his name quietly. The boy seems too weak, too small, for a child of fifteen, and that horrible, gentle protective feeling comes up upon the thief without mercy. "Why are you so frail? What worries at you?"

"I- I fear for the boy, N-Nakhti," he cries softly, new tears prickling at his eyes, though he has never known such comfort as to be held so tightly, "I cannot sleep!"

It is too wild. Too faraway. But there is a convenient out; an excuse, an alibi. Miu-sher will keep his secrets and never know them as well, and he says, "I would save him for you, if I could."

"Y-You..." the boy grasps at Nakhti's shoulder and presses his face against his chest, searching for the heart beat, "You would care that much?"

"I care enough about you," Nakhti feels the line blurring, that deadly thin line between his feelings and his actions.

"Thank you," for Miu-sher believes, with his whole little heart, that Nakhti is only 'saying' such things, to comfort him, to make him happy.

And he does... he does feel _so happy_.

* * *

Bakura paced again, a short distance from the front to the back, and when he returned, nothing had changed, and Ryou was still sound asleep, however stiffly and shallowly the sleep breath was. He passed Malik, who was curled against a reading Rashid, sound asleep and smiling, and then he passed Yugi, who was breathing slowly in and out of a paper bag while Yami massaged his back, also straining against the fear of flying that gripped his Hikari.

"Bakura," Isis says quietly, touching his hand as he passed the aisle she shared with Rashid and Malik for the third time, "Would you like to sleep, or rest?"

He glared down at her, or, the two or three overlapping images of her, and conceded a sort of defeat. "How?"

"I know you are worried for him," she glanced at the set of seats in front of her, where Ryou would occasionally murmur incoherently, "we all are."

She picked her large, white, crocheted bag, which overflowed with the sweat and labor of her hobby, which was currently keeping her sane, from the floor and dug about it in until she produced a small bottle, tinted purple and glass. "Have this tincture, and sit with him."

Bakura uncorked it, sat heavily, and closed his eyes as it went down his throat in a bitter stream. But it wasn't so bad, because as he sat, Ryou turned, and leaned he head against his tired shoulder, and put a hand on his pale, wiry arm.

Comfortably.


	11. Eleven

**(KAI)** Heliopolis = 'Sun City' in Greek. (Or, 'City of the Sun.')

Since most of Egypt's places are modernly named in Greek, and since Namu is going to Heliopolis, Nakhti is depressed that he'll probably never see Namu again.

* * *

**Who I Am  
11**

Ryou's mind spins. It twists and it turns and it lands somewhere within itself where prophecies, oracling, and incense were a part of him more than games, archaeology, and Bakura-

And Bakura-!

But the memory loses its grip on him and he falls further down until he isn't him anymore- whoever that may or may not be or was or wasn't. His throat feels scratched, and at the back of his mind, a droning voice fades away, some instructions or pathways opened, closes, resurfaced, and undone... He dreams.

"You won't see me again, Miu-sher," he whispers, pressing his face into the boy's hair and smelling the deepness of sticks and colored shampoos.

"Nakhti?" Miu-sher pulls away, shocked and suddenly gripped, as the dying are gripped, by a terrible, irrepressible fear. "What do you mean?"

Little hands grab onto the man's vest, eyes wide and ready to fill with tears at the very idea of never seeing wonderful, strong, Nakhti again.

"I'll be leaving tonight," he pulls the boy back, eyes colder than his words, "to do the right thing."

"The...?" Miu-sher bites his lip in frustration, years of tired, strenuous trancing and dreaming, headaches and illness, clouding his thinking and bringing a haze to things. "Oh, Nakhti... Please don't go..."

"Miu-sher..." he makes a wall around his heart as best he can, knowing what the smallest dent could do, "I need to do the right thing. You've helped me in this, and I thank you."

"No..." with a quiet weeping, the white-haired boy shakes his head against Nakhti's chest, "You _can't_... you _can't_, not now... you're- you're the first wonderful thing to happen to me!"

Dent. "Sh, Miu-sher, maybe one day we'll... see each other again. Don't cry, _pa sheri_, don't cry for me."

But Miu-sher does, and it breaks the man's heart.

* * *

"Rashid-vah!" Malik tugged sleepily on the man's arm, eyes glittering and lost as well, "My hair would like you very much!"

Isis winced, missing a knit in her blanket, which she had been working on nonstop and had made quite a bit of progress. "Malik, you mustn't shout on planes, and you must sit."

Three months of speaking to him like this, three months of her four-year old brother back to life! A part of her was glad- this was like the happy Malik she had known, before Ishtar had possessed and destroyed him. But... how terrible it was...

She returned Rashid's kind look with a strained smile and undid the line, beginning again with a new patience as the man who'd looked after her brother when she had been trapped in Egypt began to gently pet down the boy's pale, sandy hair. His fingers were like a fluid running down through the tangles painlessly, like silk, and the half smile on his lips would perhaps have been disconcerting if Isis had not known him for the entirety of her life.

"Rashid," she began, eyeing her brother's ecstatic face with a look akin to amusement, "Suppose I told you... suppose I told you again just how grateful I was to you... would you be bothered?"

And he smiled that warm smile she loved that made her wish he had been her father, and not the man who had placed Malik on the road to madness when he'd turned only ten. "Isis..._ta-sheri_," he added playfully, "it is nothing. You know I love him deeply."

"Yes... Yes..."

"You're troubled." Malik was purring lightly at Rashid's right side and perked to hear this.

"Concerned," she corrected, pausing the knit to the brush her bangs away from her forehead and lean against the seat. Un-focusing as she let her back and shoulder muscles relax, she could just see the tips of Ryou and Bakura's frenetic white hair above the edge of their seats. "You say he is in a trance," she noted dully, "but he only appears to be asleep. And despite the directions you give him, his memories come at their own will. The quest you sent him on he came back failing."

His eyes were dark when she met them again, and tears threatened her own, "I'm not angry his memories are returning to him... I'm angry that they cannot wait."

"Maybe Ryou-mah is sad?" Malik said gently, reaching over to lightly hold Isis' unoccupied hand.

"Ignorant child," she whispered bitterly, "He is not your mother."

"Isis-ta-sheri?" Malik said quietly, his eyes wide and pained.

"I said nothing, sweetheart," she smiled, squeezing his hand, "Go back to sleep, all right?"

The violet eyes blinked in recognition of her words, but slipped back into a pretty glaze as soon as Isis blinked in return, and he was soon curled around Rashid's arm purposefully, smiling happily.

After a moment, Rashid lay down the book he'd been reading in his left hand and placed it over Isis' still tense shoulders, pulling her into a hug she was almost startled to receive. "It is all right to feel upset, Isis... I did not anticipate his psyche's unwillingness."

"What?" she looked up at him with confusion and almost dropped her knitting sticks.

"Normal people... they don't resist like this... They don't go into trances and then disregard the path the hypnotist sets."

"But... Ryou _is_ normal, isn't he? He went where you told him the first time... to the time he foretold the _Ptah'_s location..."

"Ah, but, he came back changed," Rashid smiled slowly, his thoughts circling into some semblance of order, "without his memories, he is changed."

"Anyone would be," Isis defended, feeling foolish, "but he is still normal."

"And yet, his trances take him to places far off from where I might have sent him. Normal people, they don't... Isis, they _can't_..."

The worried tone in his voice wavered and left Isis with a cold place in her stomach, and Malik opened his eyes from his feigned sleep only for a moment, a stranger that was himself carefully filing this information away, beneath the surface that was Malik. The boy let his eyes flutter shut, then, his secret self safe from hurt, and drank Rashid's warmth as deeply as he could before falling back into red-pleasant nightmares again. He had a cold place just as his sister did, and it was frosted over.

"If he is changed," Isis said at last, as quietly as she could to him, "then how? What sort of... abnormality... could defy a priest's hypnosis?"

"What sort of priest's hypnosis requires defiance?" he said cryptically, reaching up to lightly brush Malik's coarse, falling hair. "In the scripture of Miu-sher, do you remember the piece on his trances... His 'lawless' trances?"

"I do..."

"Ryou is Miu-sher's incarnation. His Vision was sealed away, and now..."

"He is changed...!" Isis gasped, realization dawning on her abruptly.

"When we sent him back... I believe we unlocked the part of him that was sealed. Ryou has been released... back to the Oracle he once was."

"Oh... God..."

Yami listened quietly, holding Yugi in the crook of his arm, so that the boy was draped across his lap and sleeping. Most of the cabin was, including Bakura, too, now, now that he had been drugged. But no rest came to the former pharaoh. A certain dread filled him, desperate as a drowning plant's desire for the sun. The pain of watching Ryou flounder in search of his memories brought his own lack of identity back into a sharp, sharp focus. So he had been pharaoh. He could recall bits and pieces of that... pain, gold, the color of an amethyst sparkling in the sun... It none of it had meaning. Yugi had meaning. Lying in his arms, breathing comfortably at last. Yami stared ahead, intent on pretending he was in a car or train. He didn't care what so long that it were ground level.

A deep breath. From across the aisle and back one row he could hear Rashid and Isis quietly discussing Ryou... what bits he caught, though he would not admit to eavesdropping, were rather disconcerting. Changed... abnormal... Oracle... He didn't envy the boy. Not when he was going through so much, but wasn't everyone suffering as well? Perhaps he was being selfish.

Yugi stirred and he pet the boy's back slowly, softly, like a small pet in its dreams, and he leaned his head back and wondered what had happened those thousands of years ago, before the darkness of the puzzle in his own mind. Years and years and then Yugi.

The color of amethyst sparkling in the sun.

Yami grasped at it, suddenly, haltingly, but it was gone as soon as it came, and it left leaving him emptier for it. _Oh_, he thought bitterly, _I do understand, Ryou._

But that cold dread would fill him, when a voice that was himself asked him darkly if he really wanted to know.

* * *

Ishtar smiled. It wasn't so far off, now.


	12. Twelve

**(KAI)** Isn't Ryou just miserable?  
Wasn't Miu-sher just miserable?

* * *

**Who I Am  
12**

That night, he cries himself to sleep. Nakhti lowers him with the utmost care across the pallet. His hair is splayed damply from the heat of the day and from the heat which he selfishly, greedily drew from his assistant's body. His assistant- Nakhti had been with him for half one year- forever! His misery went on, and on, and at last, it had led to a deep, trance-like sleep, which Nakhti now watched with the fervor of a dying man.

This most beautiful creature. How long had he whispered into his ear at night to dream to oracle to see what he wished to see? How long had he bided his time and waited, waited, waited for this moment. If he moved quickly, he would arrive in Wedjir in time to catch the demon priest in the midst of some sort of ritual. Something dark and frightening to Miu-sher, who believed, so strongly then, that if Nakhti were truly gone when he next opened his eyes, then he had gone to save that boy. That boy with the _Ka_ sealed up in him like danger.

Nakhti smiles, bitter and sad, and runs his fingers across the pale skin of Miu-sher's shoulders- privileged and round shoulders. Shoulders which saw little sunlight, which were soft from baths of oil and lavish care. Lavish care had made him round in other places, as well. And Nakhti did not resist drawing his fingers down across the crinkled fabric of Miu-sher's night dressing, to gently touch the boy's small chest, curved belly, and flush hips to rounded thighs. Perfect little calves, just so, and small, pale feet, toes a fresh, painted color on the nail. _There would have been more to touch_, he muses,_ in another time_.

* * *

He is falling. Everything is wet all around him and when he looks about in confusion, in a lostness so profound his chest aches, he sees two men arguing. One is so tall he is God-like, sharp and blue-eyed, and the other is short but possesses such power in his frame that Miu-sher recognizes the king once again. His eyes focus and unfocus and his lungs seem ready to collapse, but he breathes. "Don't you understand the direness of this?"

"I won't let him be killed- he is innocent of crimes, of-of everything!"

Miu-sher listens coldly, dimly aware of this conversation's importance.

"Your greatness, your kingdom- in this boy, there is such power as we could never know!"

"I sense it, too," the smaller man hisses, eyes narrow as a snake's, "but I won't have his death on my hands."

"The thief king will come for him," the taller says bitterly, lying a tauk down onto a heavy wooden table. Miu-sher eyes the tauk in a dull boredom, some cold part of him spreading and icy around him.

"Yes, and for that reason, we will hide him away, keep him safe. This power he holds..." the bright reddish eyes seem almost to look at Miu-sher, "it is too great for any of us."

And though the pharaoh does not see, Miu-sher watches with an odd recognition the look of seething hatred which crosses the dark priest's eyes.

* * *

Nakhti finds his cloak where he had buried it. Uprooting several, tiny, scented yellow flowers, he finds in the small chest it and his gold bands. He puts them on slowly, ceremonially, and they feel heavy and unnatural, as though they never were. Like cuffs which bind prisoners. Then, he steals a camel, but not from the shrine which keeps Miu-sher warm and safe, and he sets off in the proper direction, fast and readily.

It is not far off. But he does not look back, for fear he turns and stays with Miu-sher and his gentle, rasping voice for the rest of his miserable days.

* * *

The plane lurched and Ryou gasped a quiet, breathy gasp which no one noticed, _he opens his eyes and they are red and puffy from his overwhelming emotions,_ and pressed his hand against his eyes, only for it to fall back down _as he tries to stand up, weary and pained, but suddenly is hit by the knowledge that Nakhti is gone_ and Ryou struggled to move as a wave of nausea hit him squarely, so that he glanced up at Bakura and instead of feeling comforted by his sleeping face he felt almost shocked, and trepidation filled him in equal parts with fear. _Miu-sher stands only for a moment before it becomes too much, and he calls for Isis, though she could not possibly be near and then slumps down in a heady heap, where all he can see are the dark spots erupting around his eyes_ that surely must have been caused by the brief turbulence. But they are so strong, he feels as though he is slipping through dry water and cannot pull back before he is hurtled back again where that fear grew, like a dark, dark weed.

_Miu-sher fainted._

It feels like the future and like the past, and Miu-sher hovers on the edge of a fantasy image which seems to be contorted by the darkest, most powerful incense. Sweet and cloying as death. He wavers but does not feel whole as he usually does. The men which were there before he fainted have returned, more shadowy and frightening. The pharaoh is haunted and thin and the priest appears ever colder. Miu-sher, if he could feel tears, may have been crying.

"Not one move," the pharaoh mutters, "Not one step."

"You are certain?" the priest seems honestly intrigued.

"Six months, Seth- the Thief King has made not one strike, not _one_ claim, in six months."

"Those marks he leaves, then. They are to be believed."

"Indeed."

"I fear what he may have been planning," Seth says wryly, settling in the second chair which faces the throne in the shadowy place beneath things. The place... where the tablets are near, Miu-sher recognizes in a brief shiver of thought.

"The dark games..." Ahmose says finally, just as wryly, as Miu-sher's senses waver out of control, "I feel they must be sealed."

"Sir, you can't mean it; their power is-"

"No, no, Seth, Ini-heret has convinced me."

"That- that _child_?" Seth spat, crossing his arms petulantly, "He is only a toy, not a wise man."

"I believe in him," Ahmose says, calmly, "He has forgiven me the things I cannot."

"Foolishness," the other snarled, "A child who knows nothing of the dark games could never-"

"Seth, I bid you leave me, and send for Ini-heret now," Ahmose's eyes flicker with a small, burnt-down anger, which in the past would have sent any person withering.

Seth nods curtly, and turns. "A once-great king, turned to putty by a river-child," is the mutter, but nothing comes of it. Ahmose hangs his head, his past shaming him.

* * *

Isis stirred from the catnap she'd unexpectedly fallen into when the stewardess began announcing descent procedures. She glanced at Rashid, who was holding Malik's hand as he bravely looked out the window at which he was seated. "He is... awake?" she ventured, eyeing the tops of white hair in front of them.

"Bakura, but not Ryou; he still sleeps, _ta-sheri_," Rashid patted her hand as she fumbled through the instructions a second stewardess was giving.

"I feel," she sighed, "as though we will not succeed, when there is so little we can do..."

"He will come through," Rashid smiled, watching Bakura carefully arrange his other half as though he were more precious than a fine china.

Isis forced a smile as Malik turned to look at her, "Isis-ta-sheri, we are home soon!"

"Yes, soon..."

* * *

Miu-sher wakes up screaming. Isis is there, suddenly, holding down his arms as he flails in the sleeping sheets and shrieks, throwing his minor weight with the force of terror which puts shouting on Isis' voice. "Darling! Sweet boy, calm down! Nakhti! Nakhti come help me!"

And when she yells these things the boy struggles yet harder, kicking and crying, and gasping out dazed, frightened things. After a few moments, he runs out of energy, and lies panting beneath the priestess whose hair is now as disheveled as his. "_No_," he moans, shaking his head, "Make it stop."

But he is not looking at her, not asking _her_; she gasps with fright as she watches his solemn, glazed eyes widen and contract sharply, against his erratic breathing. His chin quivers as he stares ahead, unseeing, and his voice came out, broken and hoarse, "Make it stop, _Nakhti_, _please_, make it stop, I can't do this anymore...!"


	13. Thirteen

**(KAI)** Oh...  
Does Seth sound... off, to you?

* * *

**Who I Am  
13**

Yugi began to whimper and then to rub his eyes. He opened them slowly, and was pleased and upset to find himself settled across his yami's lap like a spoiled house-kitten. Breathing erratically, he gingerly removed himself and sat up to look at his other half with interest. Yami was staring straight ahead, eyes blank, as though willing his thoughts linearly and succeeding.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Yugi whispered, reaching over to touch the man's hand without particularly thinking. They were warm but clammy with fear. "Are... are you all right?"

The cool, red eyes closed in a slow blink, and a small smile came creeping, too. "_Mou hitori,_ that fear which comes off you in waves..."

"Um... yes?" the boy attempted, caught up in the tiny, dazzling smirk on his other half's face.

"It is in me, as well," the former king reveled in the child's closeness a moment longer before gently pressing him back into the seat, "And we are about to land, I'm told, so put this buckle on."

Yugi nodded and buckled in, glancing over at Ryou and Bakura, neither of whom looked coherent. The dark spirit was holding one hand against his head in what looked like a fierce headache, and Ryou was still curled against his side, completely asleep.

_Chances are_, Yugi pouted, _he'll sleep through the landing just like a baby_. For a few moments longer, Yugi watched with an unmatched jealousy, the quiet, unhurried adjustment of Ryou in his seat. Bakura, seemingly far more familiar with plane systems, buckled and snapped everything together, including his Hikari, and settled in for the approaching descent, only to have Ryou, with a startling mewling sound, re-attach himself to the man's side.

Another pout.

And then the plane plummeted to the earth. Yugi immediately assumed the worst as the plane began its descent, closing his eyes tightly as every 'bump' and 'pocket' they hit seemed to jar him down to the bone. A stream of tears fled from him, miserable and terrified. "_Aibou?_" Yami's voice came to him through a tumult of hyperventilated breaths and whimpers, forced its way down the middle of Yugi's body and spread like a wildfire from there. Yami was holding his hand.

* * *

He watched Bakura grimace, shifting Ryou's body onto a sharp left shoulder, and then smiled when the flight attendants watched in horror as the frightening man with the night brown eyes packed a lifeless body from the plane. Rashid smiled, resting his hand on their shoulders and assuring them with such dark, believable, eyes, that they were less concerned for the boy with snow white hair being potato-sacked away. He did this with a fifteen year old loon swinging on his arm and singing a startling rendition of "Papa Don't Preach."

Rashid relaxed as soon as his feet hit the soil. Beside him, Isis dropped her carry-on and let out a strangled sigh of happiness. The sun was hot and sweet, and a breeze lifted through, like a whisper of stone.

Yami, with quite some measure of dignity, escorted a shaking Yugi from the aircraft; the boy's skin seemed pale enough to rival Ryou's, and as soon as he set his small, booted feet on land, he bent at the waist and relieved his stomach its contents without any adieu.

Rashid smiled, picking up Isis' bag before she could do anything about it, and glanced at the two boys before strolling toward the terminal. Bakura sneered, turning his back on the scene, completed with Yami rubbing his other half's back and cooing, and strode off, pleased that his own _hikari_, although weak (yes, oh, yes, and soft and pretty...), did not_ heave _on or off aeroplanes.

* * *

He is running. He'll steal a _horse_ from the breeder he knows of, from the anecdote priestess Isis told... and he'll go where the dream pointed him, fast, and fast, and gone. And maybe he'll come back- oh, he'll come back, he has to. Where else is he going to go? But first... that boy, that sandy-haired child that isn't any older than him, and Nakhti, they-

They need him!

Miu-sher, panting from the short run, eases into the stable and, biting down a terror, leads one of the hinnying creatures away. It is the first time he has made any sort of decision for himself, and it leaves him shaking. But... he tells himself it's only the night air.

* * *

They and thirty other people gasp and stare when Ryou flailed out of Bakura's arms and began to run half-blind down the fairway. After a few yards, the boy collapsed, a keening, crying noise escaping him. Bakura was already there.

"_Yadonushi! Yadonushi_, where are you going? What is wrong with you?" he grabbed the shaking shoulders in both bony hands, and the look of fear on Ryou's face was enough to freeze him mid-rattle. Yami and Yugi came running up next, and making their stately way next, were the adults, with Malik, oddly serene, in tow. After a moment, Ryou's eyes unclouded, and he twisted away, looking toward the way he'd seemed to want to go.

"I'm... I'm running this way... towards... towards... a god."


	14. Fourteen

**(KAI)** This one is short.

* * *

**Who I Am  
14**

From the airport at Thebes, which Ryou could dimly understand as Luxor, or possibly Waset, the ruins of Wedjir were not far. "Not far" translating to a two-day trip to the river and then another several hours of travel down it. Grimly, they moved forward across a stretch of roadless, markless, blazing heat, the camels providing the most intuitive and lively conversation which arose. Under small camelbrellas, which leant over the rides like awnings, the couples remained mostly silent, each providing himself with a tumult of their own, quiet worries.

Like a ghost, Malik was silent against Rashid's chest, eerily trailing his fingers up and down the man's arms; quite as quietly, Isis spread her hands in her lap one way and then the next, loosely seated behind her guardian (though she had ceased thinking of him in such a way) and eyes downcast on the largest, bleatingest camel. Rashid kept himself busy with his eyes on their team of children and with his large hands crossed loosely on Malik's flat belly, which would thrum with a hum of sound the boy would make when pressing his head against Rashid's collar bone.

"Rashid-vah," he said of a sudden, gripping the back of one of those hands and pulling it tightly, "If Malik dies, Rashid-vah will take good care of Isis-tah-sheri, tah-sheri, he will?"

He could feel Isis stiffen against his back, a small sharp intake. "I would. Yet how would you die?" He murmured it gently, and warmth spread across the child's cheeks- for fifteen or not, a child.

"I... am scared... I want to go home, Ryou-mah is sick and I want to go home!"

Rashid could only hold him, letting him cry against his hands.

* * *

"Malik is crying," Yugi whispered, letting Yami steer the camel a bit further away. His nervousness was palpable and strange and left Yugi feeling lost in himself, as though kingdomless.

"Yes," his other half said quietly, briefly nuzzling his hair and squeezing him; it was bold enough to make his heart skip a beat. _Yugi was so soft_. "It will pass."

"But will he ever get better?" the boy asked, clasping his hands together as though concerned, "And what's... what's happening to Ryou, Yami?"

"What is...?" the pharaoh turned his head to glance in the third camel's direction, where Ryou lay limp in Bakura's lanky arms, like a doll whose strings went cut. "_Aibou?_"

"Don't you feel him changing?" there was an edge of panic, a brush of terror. "Doesn't he feel so old to you? Older than you even? I feel how old you are sometimes, and it's _scary_, Yami, and Ryou... Ryou looks sick and even... even crazy!"

The man pressed his lips in a fine line, glancing again at the sluggish child. "If you woke up one day... and did not know who you were, or who the people around you were, do you not think you would be... afraid? Changed?"

Yugi shook his head, "I don't know what I'd do... but don't you feel him? Don't you feel like... any minute, he could... could open up your brain and crush it?"

Taking a forced swallow, Yami held more tightly to his precious, terrified other half and nodded.

* * *

"I don't trust you," Ryou said in a hush, lazily stretching against Bakura's chest, which was the place he knew best, somewhere between lost and gone and his name. "I see you, _glimmers_ of you... a knife and the pharaoh... A man who isn't you, but feels like this..."

Bakura stayed silent, only biting a canine into the corner of his lip. "You have not trusted me before."

Ryou started from his overheated, partially exhausted state and tried to look at Bakura's sharp, agonized face.

"I changed for you."

For a moment, Ryou went silent, his heart pounding in his chest like a herd of thundering turtles. At last he whispered, "But who's that?"

"I've been asking that for a long time." Bakura's grip on the camel reigns was white and Ryou grimaced, a brief flash of red assaulting his lesser memories and then vanishing.

His voice slow, for fear of it breaking, Ryou whispered, "_What did you do?_"

Like a ghost, Bakura's breath silked across his neck, nuzzled below his ear, and while the blush which erupted across his cheeks smoothed, the man rested a sharp chin on the crown of his head.

_I killed a thousand men, stole a thousand treasures. I piled them at your feet. I used and controlled you, tricked you into helping me plunge the world into a new darkness._

_You stopped me._

_You forgave me._

_Your name was Ryou Bakura, and you shared your name with me when I didn't remember my own._

Ryou's heart skipped a beat, and his mind began to reel- that voice-

_I don't remember who I was before you, or why I'm here now._

_I remember the fire that killed my home... gold and blood. I remember the items... and I remember the white light that was the last thing I saw before you._

His hands fluttered maddeningly around his skull, his ears, and his chest. They came to a rest on Bakura's hands, nails biting in. _That voice_-

He held his breath.

_You... You were worth everything..._

Bakura was nuzzling the boy's hair, though it had become tangled and dry, and his voice was so dark and dripping and intense that Ryou began to shiver, again and again until his breath hitched out of him unbidden.

_But no matter what I did... You forgave me..._

Ryou's heartbeat shot through him, and he mewled, the voice strumming deep in his mind and inescapable. Desperately, he murmured, his focus melting in and out in a spiral between the sky and the earth and the hair of the camel's head, "You- you!"

_That was who you were._

His mind split, and darkness closed in.


	15. Fifteen

**(KAI)** Where is Kurkur and Kharga (Karga)? Luxor? _Thebes?_  
Well, we're assuming Luxor IS Thebes, and Esna is the closest approximate which is latitudinally similar to the imaginary Wedjir and further to Kurkur, but I must say it's entirely up for disproval. Also, it seems the entire time I've been saying "Isis-tah-sheri" it should have been "Isis-tah-sherit" or "Isis-ta-sherit."

* * *

**Who I Am  
15**

He has never liked the way men look at him. He likes the way this one looks at him less- but the weeks of driving heat and dehydration, and the growing sense of desperation, send him willingly enough into the blue-eyed priest's hands. Besides. If he wants something like_ that_ badly enough, it won't have been the first time Namu gave up his virtue. Anything to get to Heliopolis.

* * *

_He feels light enough to be crushed by feathers. A dark thing holds at him, twirls him through an undulating light, but he can feel solid things beneath his fingertips, like wood and the roughness of stone; and the cloying thick of incense wraps around his lungs and makes it so hard to breathe. It seems as though the first he saw is gone and past and the next is miles into a future long past.  
_

* * *

He is a slight boy, smaller than the pharaoh, who could hide in the drapes unseen with ease when they played. The dark, maddened pharaoh to whom he was brought is a long gone memory. He isn't afraid anymore. And pharaoh calls him by name, and tells him how pretty his eyes are, and now they sleep in the same bed, so that pharaoh uses him as a comfort object, all wrapped around and tight and breathing on the back of his neck like a wish coming true. He purrs in his sleep, and in the morning, pharaoh kisses his forehead.

But the priest who is high-appointed frightens him. The dark, ululating swirls of magic that fall around him blue and black as a greening bruise, _that_ scares him. And his cold, cold blue eyes, that look at him as though he is small and easily crushed and in the way of something great. And terrible. Ini-heret misses home when the priest smiles, misses the palms and trickle of blue life in little Kharga, and the clean, _magiclessness_ of it, where the dark games that haunt pharaoh's dreams, and the gods and demons, housed in _Kas_, are _not_.

But Ini-heret is the One Who Brings Back The Distant One, and he does.

* * *

_Miu-sher. Ryou. Myu-share, Rye-oh, Myou-cher, Rie-ouh, Mew-oh..._

_Kitten. With its eyes closed against the harsh things around. He is a boy, running, running furiously, throwing himself into a wind that throws his unnatural hair about and strains his eyes. His head feels ready to split from the heat and from his worry. _

_A boy is going to die- he doesn't know who he is- he'll never see Nakhti again- Bakura is- Bakura is-_

_Going to kill him..._

* * *

It is only one hundred and a half lengths from Kurkur to Luxor... He will take a skiff across the shallow of the river, and then take a new camel, or perhaps a _horse_ to the secret temple. There... he will kill the man who burnt his childhood to the ground.

And Nakhti absolutely will not think of wide, green eyes, soft, whitened hair, and the delicate, raspy little incense voice that said his name again and again and meant it.

* * *

_His heart is heavy. He feels the blood pounding in his ears, but floats restlessly. He is somewhere- nowhere- the place he was once before. It's lonely. His vision is clouded, but the visions keep coming, one after one after the other, and in his dizziness, he feels almost as though he is dreaming, and can only wonder whose memories these are, because God, if they're his..._

* * *

Things are falling into place perfectly. The pharaoh's boy is leaving on the night- for what could Pharaoh deny him? What wish would go unfulfilled?- and who should tell if his innocent visit home should not end in a bandit's cruel strike? Who should tell if the attack was not a mistake?

Perhaps... a false report? A report of the gold cuffs and blood red robe of the infamous Nakhti of Kul Elna? Why, the pharaoh and his boy look so much alike- it would only be a _blessing_ that Ahmose had not been the one on a trip that night.

Surely, he thinks this with his blue eyes glittering, alone in the bowels of his secretive, dark and dimlit temple, that terrible knowledge, and the grief of that loss, would send Ahmose straight, deep and down into that pit of madness and despair which had left him paralyzed and demonic, and so very, very easy to persuade...?

Yes, at that time, just in time, he would be given the pharaoh's blessing and aide in releasing the god. He looks into the cell which he had placed the god and smiled. Dark, russet skin, soft and worn beautiful to the touch, and the sand of _Kemet_ in his hair as a color easy to grab and pull and make submissive. Seth's smile widens, canines and hissing.

Namu looks away, tired and upset and ready to die. It has been too long, now, trapped here, as he had somehow known he would be. It has been five months. He'll never see Heliopolis. He'll never see Odion again.

* * *

_He is almost there. Almost- almost closely there. But he doesn't know where that is. Vaguely, he knows there is water nearby. Near the not-him, near the dreamless, sleepless, hurting him who doesn't know yet- doesn't yet comprehend-_

* * *

The reports trickle in slowly. Ahmose fears and yet he does not. For nigh on a half a year of time, the pyramids and the tombs, and the monoliths, and the obelisks, and the statues and temples, sacred monuments and places of worship have gone untouched by the hand of that black devil Nakhti. Oh, surely they have been touched- sometimes successfully, often not- by the hands of less experienced and less darkened thieves, but the marks which the 'thief king' leaves behind have not arisen and the palace has begun to wonder- just where is the beast?

"Ini," the pharaoh beckons softly, and the boy with the dark hair and brilliant, violet eyes, rises from his place on the game, practicing at _Senet_, "Come here to me."

"My lord?" Ini-heret presses his hands into the taller's shoulders, concerned. He has a way of knowing when there are wrong things afoot.

Pharaoh grabs him suddenly, tightly, pressing his face against the soft hair, creamy skin of the boy's neck. "I do not know if the streets are safe, _mery_, but I have considered..."

He trails off, resting his hand on the back of the boy's neck, and Ini-heret blushes wildly, clasping his hands in front of Pharaoh's chest at the "beloved" allusion. "My lord, are you troubled?"

"Never with you," and Ahmose kisses the side of Ini-heret's temple before gently leaning back on the day rest bed. "We will sleep, and when we are done, I will let you go to visit your home."

Ahmose's throat closes around the promise, his desperate possessiveness shrieking its jealousies; his arms go around the desert boy that much tighter, and he resolves not to keep him like a caged bird, as much as he-

And Ini-heret throws his soft, rounded arms about his neck, delighted and already promising to be back as soon as was possible.

And it was worth the pain of not knowing.

* * *

_He is lost and being held by the strongest, warmest arms; terrified and safe at last. Miu-sher looks upon Ryou upon Miu-sher upon Ryou. _

_The image floats and hazes in front of the boy's eyes, chocolate brown and viridian green meeting steadily- white locks whisping as a mirror, and then, abruptly, with a relief flooding the tenseness of the waif's image, sighs out of existence, passing through him, and smiling softly. He holds his heart in agony, the tearing inside it so violent as to make him scream in the dark, wholeless mist of smells and stone. _

_Who are you? he shrieks, lost again, and burning._

_But the ghost of himself is gone, and the sand is hot against his fingertips._

* * *

"Hold him down!"

"Isis-tah-sheri! Isis!" Malik ran to his sister's skirts and hid behind them in terror, "Make it stop! Ryou-mah is- _please!"_

She held him tensely, watching with dark, unhappy eyes as Bakura, Yami, and Rashid held the blossoming oracle down by the arms and feet. The child was thrashing and screaming and going ragged in the voice. No words formed, and no shouts woke or broke through to him.

Rashid's voice, which rarely went above its soft decibel, seemed intense and powerful as he yelled, "He is visioning- Isis, shield Malik-"

The next she heard, turned from the scene and holding Malik's shaking head to her bosom, was a frightening _crack_. Her brother, so young but stronger yet than her, broke away and went tearing across the muddied sand to Rashid, who cradled his knuckles wearily and looked guilty as a murderer. The blood trickling from Ryou's mouth was all more indication, and Isis found herself nearly collapsing to the ground in misery. _What in the name of the gods was _wrong_ with that boy?_

Instead, though, she watched, nearly outside of herself, as she left Malik, yet again, to the care of their keeper, and strode across the sand to the mumbling boatmen, who looked upon them suspiciously, and with fear. "_You!_" she commanded in Egyptian, holding her spine as straight as possible, and despite the fight between her and her jellied legs, knew she appeared as composed as a duchess, and just as important. "_You will take us to the apex of Esna, as quickly as possible!"_

The boatmen looked at her in surprise and seemed ready to argue, but as he opened his mouth she fell her eyes on him, dark and kohl-rimmed, and said darkly, "_Do you propose to disobey the will of He Who Possesses the Third Eye of Kurkur? You will be paid, ready passage for seven."_

Breathing deeply, she returned with steady steps; proud, but empty.

Rashid, gently, held the crying Ishtar youngest, assuring him that his Ryou-mah was fine, and would be fine, and that this trial would pass. Yugi was similarly comforting Yami, wordlessly. His wide eyes and look of tremulous fear, for all of them and for and of Ryou, shook his other half to the core, and he held on to the boy without shame.

Bakura was the worst. He held onto his _hikari_ with pale, shaking arms, barely restraining the sting of tears against his eyes and muttering a constant, adamant string of curses to no one, under his breath, as he wiped the blood from Ryou's cut lip. The blow had ceased the violent, unstoppable misfirings of the boy's taxed mind, but his limp and pale lifelessness left Bakura feeling colder than ice, colder than the days he could remember bathed in blood.

He cradled his other half and nearly sobbed; the only one who understood him- the only one who forgave him- who had loved him- for whom he had changed and repented and been reborn-

This boy- who meant _everything_-

Collapsed, nearly comatose, and perhaps dying.

And without any memory of these things at all.


	16. Sixteen

**(KAI) **Truth is- forever.

* * *

**Who I Am  
****16**

He fell. One foot tripped over the other foot and entangled, desperately, in his dress, and the burn of the sand pinched him over and over and over as he rolled helplessly to the foot of the hill. Scraped and bleeding, he toddled to his sore feet and pressed on, determined. Close to tears.

"Nakhti," he choked, stumbling on as the sun set.

* * *

A speck of black dotted his horizon around noon; it meandered out of reach and nearly out of sight for some time before resolving itself. A _horse_. The camels bleated in boredom as Seth drew them to a stop. Its black mane of hair tangled in the wind as it ran recklessly past, some lengths away. Like a crocodile's, his gaze swept slowly from the wild beast to the hilly it had come from.

When he sensed the _Ka_, he smiled. There was time.

* * *

He had not wept since he was a child. Since the time his mother, the crazed and brazen Hatshepsut, had religiously removed his name from the scrolls, walls, and monuments of the dynasty's history. Of the first Ahmose.

His inclination to seal the dark games, and his inclinations against marriage, had warranted that; but her death in the capture of her own Ka, the frightening Harpy of the West, had changed those attempts at erasing his name from existence.

Now the dark games... they were terrible, but... there was usefulness to them which he had not previously considered. Ahmose lifted the boy's body closer to him.

"Ini..."

There was no response. "Ini, Ini... _Mery_... I love you..."

A small envoy was headed at that time for the green-soaked oasis of Kharga, the young boy's birthplace. A priest had been appointed to inform the planted village there, of their child's death. Not of his murder.

Ahmose laid the boy down as gently as he could; the grave makers would be coming soon- sooner than he would have ever liked. The king's tears rolled down his face unashamedly, and he pressed a last kiss to the boy's forehead. "I will not take of your lips, _mery_, until... we may be together..."

And until the makers came, he sobbed... wet into the boy's shoulder, where once there had been life.

Indeed... if there was a purpose for the dark games, and the _Kas..._ it was revenge.

* * *

As he tumbled down to the edge of the hill, Miu-sher's vision went in, and then left out, as though he were experiencing a violent burst of blackouts. It may have been the heat. It may have been the way of things which were to come.

As he lost sight of the sand and sky, flashes of a night not long ago regaled him; a moonlessness- a shadowed man, tall, in a red cape- and a young boy- _that boy, the king's boy, he who brings back the distant one_- quietly guiding a camel from the royal garden. The man in red- _red red, blood red red-_ oh!

And then Miu-sher gasps, calling his aide's name, as the knife slides desperately into the innocent boy's heart, and the sun begins to set.

* * *

Nakhti drew his cloak around his shoulders; the air was getting cooler, and he had begun, contritely, to miss the warmth and comfort of the old temple. Straw beds, sure, but good cotton wove covers to go with them, and the knowledge that only some walls away-

He shook his head, briefly touching the scars and frowning. There was no going back- not now. Not ever.

* * *

It isn't the same as the Ptah presence. It is not weaker- but it does not reek of power. Some sort of balance is holding to it, a tipping scales, almost weighted- but trying not to be. Seth found the pale, white-haired boy stumbling across the desert moments later.

Heat has never been part of Miu-sher's life- great warmth, but never the rays of sunlight. Without a parasol, or tou, or some barrier, he had become weak, and feverish... and open. Cautious, Seth advanced on the _Ka-_bearing child, and allowed them to tumble into his arms. It was a boy- a pampered-looking one, whose skin had begun to redden and whose robes clung mercilessly.

But- he was not expecting-

"Seth? Seth... Hathor is... She's- He is- oh, someone killed her! That poor boy, and- and-!"

"Be silent!" Seth eyes went wide in shock; the child's face was drawn and flushed, and his eyes were cloudy with sightlessness. He grasped the boy's shoulders roughly, shocked as to how his name was known, "Who are you?"

Miu-sher looked up at him, and in the ragged voice of fourteen years of smoke and incense and warmth, whispered, "Ma-at... The incarnate; son, I am Ma-at."

And Miu-sher, with a faint gasp, slid to the ground.


	17. Seventeen

**(KAI)** So that last chapter sucked; I understand.  
It's okay that you think that.  
But it had to happen- transition and... stuff.  
So. Hathor? Ma-at? You're curious, aren't you?  
Well, I'll tell you now. Remember when Isis said some of the _Kas_ that people possessed were those of the Gods? Well, turns out, Ini-heret (Egypt!Yugi) had the Hathor _Ka_, and Miu-sher (Egypt!Ryou) had Ma-at. I'll tell you more about those gods later. Until then, wade through my story until the plot picks up.

**Who I Am  
****17**

* * *

It was with some bravery that Yugi approached the largest camel; his knees, though they were not on stand, seemed to be shaking. Yami's possessive hold of his stomach was not helping, as the butterflies which sprung to life under the former spirit's fingertips were great and heavy and left him breathless. Still, he steered Hathor (the name which he had given his camel with some restrained affection) toward Rashid and Isis and Malik's slowly plodding beast.

"Rashid?" his childish voice is a shame; he's so tired and upset there is a little, helpless tone in it that makes him cringe in embarassment, but blush in a very strange anxious nervousness as the tone brought about Yami's tightening grip on his waist and hips. "Um... um..."

Isis looked up from her dubious on and off examination of her breaking nails, "Yugi, dear, what concerns you?"

He took a deep breath and briefly shut his dark, purple eyes against a stray breeze, "I... I was wondering about Ryou..."

Rashid nodded grimly, glancing at the third camel's passengers with a vague interest, "Is it possible you have noticed, as well, young one?"

Ignoring the somewhat insulting comment (knowing it was meant without ill will did not make his age or his height any less of a tender subject), Yugi went on, "He's changed, hasn't he?"

"Yes," Isis interjected, drawing up closer to Rashid's back in spite of herself, "His mind has..."

Rashid waited for her to finish, but her voice had trailed off and lost its words in the desert heat, swirling around them, "His mind has undergone a transformation. He may... he may never be the same again."

"When you say that," Yami was leaning his head against Yugi's head, and he lifted it tiredly, "How do you mean it?"

"Unfortunately, whatever block Miu-sher imposed on his second sight may have been broken. Rather than merely access the former life's memory, we seem to have accessed the entire former life."

Malik was stirring, quietly mewling in his sleep.

Rashid finished quietly, "The Ryou you knew before may never be the same."

And Yugi bit his lip, watching as Isis leaned her head against Rashid's broad back in obvious turmoil, and listened as Yami's breathing stopped for one brief moment and then sighed heavily against his shoulder. "Why does he keep blacking out? Why can't we just get to the prophecy like you said we could?"

His voice rose and then fell as he realized it had risen, and Hathor bleated in some kind of agreement. "I'm sorry... I'm just... really worried about him..."

His grip on the reigns faltered- a warm, consoling feeling flooding down into him through the link they had shared since the beginning- and Yami's arms tightened around him.

Rashid nodded, adjusting his own grip on a set of reigns as Malik suddenly thrashed and wailed. "I am truly sorry," Rashid said softly, holding the boy against his chest as Isis rubbed her eyes miserably. "Ryou is... no longer fighting for just himself."

"Ryou-mah...?" Malik's pale violet eyes fluttered, and they seemd almost to be crying, tearlessly, "Don't let me hurt him, O, please..."

"Shh, Malik," the older man sighed heavily, lowering his gaze from Yugi's concerns to his own. Yami rested his head back on Yugi's and watched almost disinterestedly as Rashid carefully petted the boy down and whispered sweet little calming things at him. Slowly, Yugi steered the camel away a bit, watching over at Ryou and Bakura for a moment. Ryou was dead asleep again, as though the energy re-living his memories took was more than he possessed, and Bakura was staring straight ahead, expressionless and oozing an almost endearing worry.

"I don't understand what's happening, Yami," he whispered, letting his head fall back for a moment, against the taller's too-warm chest. His heartbeat quickened, and a light flush rose to his cheeks, but the pharoah's calm, unchanging body language soothed him into complacency, and he found that- more than uncomfortable or embarassed to be where he was- he was quite content, resting against the other half of his soul. And that thought made him smile.

* * *

When he awakens, Miu-sher is inside a small room and he is starving. _Tell him about Kurkur, Kurkur, Kurkur,_ a voice tells him, but sifts away as he rises. _Tell him about Bakura..._

"But who is Bakura?" he wonders aloud, head reeling as though surrounded by smoke.

"And who are you?" a boy across the way sneers at him, curled around his legs and leaning against the wall as though it is all that holds him up. His hair is the color of honey and sand and his skin is deep and beautiful. But he is covered in dust and dismay and Miu-sher wants to cry at the sight of him.

"I know you..." he whispers, the urge to go closer, to touch him, filling him unconditionally.

"Well I _don't_ know you, so why don't you back off?" the honey-skinned boy is taken aback by how similar this new boy looks, and has been watching him intently since that _priest_ left him here. Pale skin, however, and deep brown eyes, set him distinctly apart from Nakhti (Nakhti whom he misses _so_ badly).

Miu-sher whithers under the other boy's harsh gaze, and he stutters out, gazing around at the sparsely decorated and badly lit cell, "Miu-sher- my name is Miu-sher."

The dark-skinned boy's glare softens; something about the boy's bleached hair and soft tone- oddly rasped and weak- turning a key in him that only Odion had ever been able to broach.

"My name is Namu."

Silence falls through them and tumbles into the empty space like threats of death. Slowly, carefully, Miu-sher continues his way across the room, crawling a bit and finally stopping about five handspans away. "Namu... where is this? Why are we-"

Namu jerks his head to look as the white-haired boy began to violently cough and wheeze, "Miu-sher- are you, are you all right?"

And despite what he has told himself (despite the fear of touch and touching and that _priest_) never to do again, he is reaching for the new boy, and grasping his shoulders (and they are so round and pretty and not sharp at all like his, or like Nakhti's), and hoping sincerely it will pass.

Miu-sher nods, letting his other hand rest on Namu's.

An eternity passes, and when Miu-sher looks up, Namu has tears in his eyes. Wonderingly, he touches them, and Namu whispers, "We're in a temple somewhere. I've... I've been here for _months_, I think... And..."

Miu-sher leans in, and a new part of him- somehow stronger, somehow weaker whispers, _I know you, I know you._ "Do you know me?" he rasps, grasping Namu by the cheeks.

"N-No," Namu sniffled, now trying to draw away from the intense brown eyes.

"_Ptah_," Miu-sher hissed before convulsing and falling into Namu's lap.


	18. Eighteen

**(KAI)** Also good news: we have a viable plot skeleton for the rest of the story.  
Which means I actually, finally, outlined what's been in my head since we started this journey together.  
Who likes the sound of thirty chapters?

* * *

**Who I Am**

**18**

"Stop it! Stop! _Stop, please!_" The shriek is so sudden as to cause two of the camels to begin bleating and moaning. All eyes turned in horror- convulsively shaking in Bakura's arms, Ryou screamed again.

"Don't! Ahmose! _Ahmose!" _An almost watery gasp tore from Ryou's throat, and as Bakura's grip slipped, the group watched helplessy as the teen fell from the camel and landed to the sand with a heavy thump.

He was clutching his heart.

Yugi's eyes widened; despite Yami's warm, capable hands holding him safely, he could feel his own heart skip, and then skip again, as though it had been stabbed through.

Bakura and Isis were the first to manage a dismount, running to the boy's side. He was coughing and hacking in a puddle of himself, curled tightly against the sand. "Get off- get- get away-"

Ryou shoved himself from the ground, stumbling a few feet before wretching. After a moment, Bakura crept closer, only to be shoved mercilessly away. Ryou's eyes were glassy, but within a moment's wide-eyed search, found Yami's.

Later, Yami would swear that had appeared green.

Ryou burst into tears, sinking back to the ground and balling his fists against his eyes."What's happening?" he moaned, rocking jerkily back and forth. "What's happening to me?"

Bakura's heart was sunk somewhere deep in his gut, and for the not the first time, he found it difficult to breathe. "_Hikari..._" He inched forward, and somewhere behind him, Isis was managing the camel, gently pulling on its reins.

"I saw- I saw..." Ryou twitched under Bakura's hand, "Again- Again? I saw... The One... The One Who Brings Back The Distant One... he's... leaving- going- home, he's going home. Pharaoh- Oh God-"

Ryou hiccupped and looked around desperately; behind his eyes, images of two men, dressed in red cloaks, shimmered apart and together, indescernible. He stood on shaky legs, stumbling again before gaining balance enough to look from one face to the next- seeing and unseeing as greyness is grey.

"I saw it _again_," Ryou panted, dragging a hand through sweat-drenched hair. "A _man_ in red... a knife-"

Yugi's heart skipped again, not for the last time that day.

"Ini-heret? Who- a scar," his gaze swept, pupils dilated dangerously, "A scar across his cheek. He _killed_ Hathor. I _saw_ it."

A moment later, a sank to the ground, weeping, "Who am _I?_"

This time, he let himself be curled against the familiar chest, murmuring, "I want to go back to Kurkur, I want it to end. _I_ wanted it to end. So long ago... Oh, God."

"Shh, _Yadonushi,_" Bakura's heart raced. He had never felt so helpless before.

"Shh..." Ryou repeated slowly, the warmth of Bakura's chest seeping into him hotly. Familiar. There were eyes on him- he felt them, and they burned just as badly.

Behind his eyes, a flash of white hair and dark eyes burned him. The thud-thud-thud of Bakura's heart slammed into his ears, and he scrambled away, eyes wide.

"You?" his voice was choked with an odd sense of despair.

"_Hikari?_" Bakura's blood ran cold. "What... what did I do...?"

It was the first time- ever- which anyone had thought Bakura might cry.

"Get away-" Ryou scooted further away, gripping huge handfulls of hot sand. Above him, the sun reached its peak glare, and he nearly gagged on the heat that surrounded him.

"_Yadonushi_-"

"Ryou-mah?"

Ryou's glance abruptly shot to the little voice that called to him. Malik was sitting up, almost straining against Rashid's arms, "Ryou-mah- don't let it happen again- I don't want to die-!"

The white-haired boy stood, reaching a shaking hand forward- "I- I know you- I know you...!" A moment later, he sank to the ground, as though a great gasp of air had fallen from his lungs.

"Ryou-mah... Ma'at..." Malik whispered, sinking into Rashid's embrace with tears of confusion in his eyes.

"History need not repeat, dear one," the man who held him whispered back, "Though I promise no harm will come to you..."

"Rashid-vah... Beloved... beloved..." Malik murmured; Isis was talking to Bakura, and they were agreeing, even as Yami and Yugi's camel began slowly plodding forward, that Kurkur was the sure bet. Bakura, hands shaking, was lifting Ryou's limp body to the step of their tou, and was soon settled.

"Malik?" Rashid's voice wafted in and out, like a dream. Malik smiled.

"Isis-tah-sheri... let's help her up."

And Rashid lent his hand when the young woman, troubled-looking, stepped up to their four-legged ride.

Malik remained quiet, occasionally squirming, as though his head were swimming with memories and strings.

* * *

Wedjir. Esna. Somewhere, miles off, Ishtar screamed, covered in dirt and blood, and empty-handed. And one of the strings in Malik's head went taut.


	19. Nineteen

**(KAI)** This chapter burns with dialogue.  
It seems that Odion, too, has a Ka.  
That was unintentional.

* * *

**Who I Am  
19**

He paces from one end of the room to the next, stick after stick of incense burning down the time. Ini-Heret's funeral ceremony had been the previous morning, and upon return to Luxor, Ahmose had made a point of placing himself as far as possible from the social graces of the priests and their duties. Still, Seth had made himself a figure, gliding through the room almost as a predator.

"Nakhti..." the starkly blue-eyed man began, leaning against a wall, watching Ahmose occasionally pause to rake hands through impossibly wild hair.

"I don't wish to hear about the thief," Ahmose spat, stalking through the room venomously.

"I suppose not," Seth said smoothly, moving to lean against one wall. Lying like a snake, he smiled, and Ahmose, his back turned, did not see it. "Though I feel I should inform you... the Kurkur woman has sent a messenger-"

"Isis? Madame Isis? The oracle's keeper?" Ahmose's eyes narrowed, and he rounded on Seth abruptly. "Does she send word from the oracle? Did he see- anything?"

Seth smiled. All the oracle would be seeing now was the inside of a cell, until death. And for his part, it was a bitter enough smile, Ahmose saw nothing of it but the words it preceded, "No. She has sent word that the oracle has been _kidnapped_."

"Gods..."

"And they suspect Nakhti had something to do with it, " Seth's expression waned passively, "Apparently, their temple-hand disappeared the same night the boy did."

Ahmose blanched, ruby eyes flickering with horror. "I suppose you mean to tell me... Nakhti is truly _after_ the _ka_ we discussed?"

"Surely he killed your boy to distract you with grief. I place nothing past the monster," Seth's menace covered his amusement. What knife could not be filched and then blamed on another? And it had slipped so smoothly from his hand, and through the boy's tiny chest. Once, twice. The blood... was _everywhere_.

"With that boy- Miu-sher was it?- surely he could find the _ka's_ vessel, _surely_..." the shorter man turned to the priest, "That child, the one with sun-bleached hair who houses _Ptah_, he has been well-kept I trust?"

Kept, and delighted in; the thought passed like a stray and Seth banished it, finding no pleasure in the possessiveness thoughts of Namu brought on, "Of course, sir. He resides in Esna even now."

"So close to the temple of Wedjir?"

Seth took a deep breath, appearing quite calm, though his heart raced with the blurry delight of oncoming power, waited and planned for, "Your highness... the day has come, I fear, that my placing him at Esna has proved wise."

"You mean to..." Ahmose breathed deeply, his grief enough to give him pause at the thought- consideration. "To use the dark games against that thief."

"Only Ptah can stop him," the brown-haired priest grimaced, "You know of his strength. His ingenuity. His _cruelty_."

The last added the effect Seth needed. He watched as Ahmose's eyes narrowed darkly, "The dark games have caused me such pain...I admit I've... I've thought to use them to my benefit now."

"Do not think yourself like Hatshepsut, my lord," Seth said quietly, knowing the king's feelings.

"My mother would never use the games to avenge her loved ones... That harpy."

Seth waited a moment, and then walked over to press a small letter into the young pharaoh's hands, "I believe he meant to give this to you while he was gone. A servant found it."

He knew that this straw would break the camel, and soon... _soon_ the power of Ptah would be his, and the _world_ would rest at his fingertips.

Ahmose nodded, and dismissed the tall, well-dressed priest. He read slowly, absorbing the gentle strokes against fine parchment.

_My only King, May You be found in Glory, and Love, for I have barely left, but miss You terribly. When I return, I would a favor request. You and I, shall we see the Gardens together? They say Babylon is beautiful, and Worshipful of the Great Goddess Hathor, whom I Love with all of My Faith. I send a Kiss to you, upon Your brow, may it find You well, and Gently keep me in Your Thoughts. Ini-heret_

Hathor. He could fondly remember burning incense in her name for the boy, though his city's god was Amun-Ra. The way the boy's little hands would brush against his, sweeping ash... His bright eyes, his smile... Little Ini-heret... The One Who Brings Back the Distant One.

Now weeping, Ahmose fell to the ground- resolved to destroy Nakhti at any cost.

* * *

"Oh, Gods, oh, Gods," Namu shook the boy, rattled him, nearly collapsed on him hyperventilating. "Wake up, wake up, please, please-"

And on, for what seemed like an eternity. He clasped his hands together, "Make him wake up. _Make him_."

He did not know to whom he prayed. Some greatness which had no name, and no face, but which Odion had told him could be discovered in Heliopolis almost a year ago. Sputtering, Miu-sher's coughing brought Namu violently from his line of devoted thought. "Oh, thank you, _thank you_," his voice broke, unused to such fervent shouting and _real_ caring. Not even Nakhti had ever elicited such responses from him- but Nakhti (Gods, _Nakhti_) had always been able to take care of himself.

This waif, who looked like Nakhti just a bit, was obviously sick, and obviously _special._

"I'm all right," the boy coughed, lifting himself wearily, "That happens sometimes."

Namu was taken aback, and shouted, "Fucking _what?_"

"Shh, shh," Miu-sher said gently, touching the darker boy's knee, "We're all right."

And Namu was surprised to find himself soothed. "You... you know something, don't you? Who are you?"

"I don't know," Miu-sher smiled, perfectly amiable, though reeling from the violent vision, where a boy like himself, somehow stronger, somehow weaker, had confronted a boy like the one he sat with- somehow less sane.

_Ishtar_.

"There's something in you," he whispered, "something special."

No one had ever called Namu special aside from Odion, and having the word thrown at him just after he himself had thought it, caused his heart to skip. "M-Miu-sher... What do you know about _kas?_"

Miu-sher shook his head, "Not much... only..." he held his stomach, "Only I might have one, but please don't tell. Isis said not to tell."

Namu swallowed hard, "The priest... he says I have one, too."

Priest. Miu-sher's eyes widened.

_Seth. Ishtar_.

* * *

"Your highness," a deep intonation met Ahmose's numb ears.

"Odion," he returned, clutching a parchment the Nubian could not identify.

"I was summoned, sir?"

Ahmose took a deep breath. He'd hired Odion some months ago. The majestic man had been on his way to the City of the Sun, where the Original God of Ptah was worshiped, when he'd stopped him in the street. Now, Odion was his adviser above all priests.

"Yes," the wild-haired man sighed, "I require your assistance."

"Anything, sir."

"You are aware that Kurkur's oracle is missing?"

"Yes, sir."

"When all is said and done... I want you to find him."

Odion spotted the defeat immediately, "What, my lord, is 'all'?"

"I will die soon." Ahmose smiled, "I feel it is true. I thought this..." he tapped his chest, "would keep me alive forever, but it is sad and weak without Ini."

"A... _ka, _sir?" Odion came to sit at the table where Ahmose sat, composing letters.

"I feel it here," Ahmose smiled softly, tired.

Odion nodded. "Amun-Ra."

"You are aware?"

"Of so much sir," the dark man's smile was equally tired.

"Let me guess," Ahmose grinned, almost as though he were enjoying himself. "Thoth?"

Odion smiled in return, grasping a scrap of parchment and wetting a quill. "Who knows? I do not care. To know is only to be the pawn of dark games."

"I believe," Ahmose said sullenly, "that one day they will mean much more. Else they will be sealed."

"You speak again of death."

"I do," the king sighed, "I fear the _ka_ which is my only hope to destroy the thief and right this world."

"Perhaps you should instead seal the games, my lord."

"One or the other, I will be dead."

"I believe you."

"So please, carry on this work," Ahmose noted the sketched boy on Odion's paper, and then sealed a document which meant remarkably little, "find that boy. Tie the loose ends I have unraveled in this life. It's all I ask."

"It's not much," Odion smiled.

"Will you go to Heliopolis?" The question took the Nubian by surprise.

"Why?"

"You wanted to go there, before-"

"Yes, before..." Odion grimaced. Wasn't it best not to follow that child, for that was all he was? That honey-skinned boy with pale, silken hair? Whose pale eyes had blinked at him lovingly, trusting him not to betray him, as all other had. Such love- he would not betray it with the terrible love he held. Only betray it with abandonment...

Ahmose smiled bitterly, "In the afterlife, shall we laugh about our troubles?"

"Yes, sir," Odion returned, scrapping the drawing of Namu with as much ease as he could muster.

Death seemed like such a gift, then.


	20. Twenty

**(KAI)** This chapter is what Miu-sher saw when he collapsed on Namu.

* * *

**Who I Am  
20**

One moment, he- whoever _he_ was, as he had rather lost perspective of that- was reeling under a hot sun in the middle of a desert he knew, and did _not_ know, and then was holding and seeing Malik- who was not really Malik at all, but a boy from another time, so much like him, and _damned_.

One moment. And the then the next; Ryou could have screamed, all the air in his lungs like ghosts escaping and avenging his memories.

He had begun wondering, as he slept, and dreamt, and seemed occasionally to die- who was the twin which had met him, soft and sleepy, when he'd originally collapsed? Why did that _book_, no longer seem to play any role in his dreaming, and what did the dreams _mean?_

Worse... these arms which he found around him. Whose arms were they? Two images had distorted together- scars, blood, and confusion.

Bakura. Nakhti. The names had blurred- the identities had not. But the warmth of the man's chest left him feeling complacent and safe, like he had once been, before-

Before what?

Ryou sat forward with a start, his eyes open and wide and impossibly green; nearby, Malik was thrashing on the ground, screaming, and clutching his skull.

_Before I decided to end all of this- before Ishtar broke it open again!_

Ryou did not have the time to dissect the fragment of memory, which seemed at once to come from where he had been, where he, or some semblance of 'he' whose eyes had definitely not been green. Isis' shrieks cut through his chest, as though he had heard them before,_ long _ago, and he jerked to stare. In the circle of Bakura's arms, he blinked rapidly, absorbing what he could; unable to remember Malik, either before or after his strange affliction made him wonder briefly if the outburst was possibly normal.

"Ryou," Bakura whispered softly, frowning and holding the boy's head to his chest, knowing that his other half was watching the sick scene unfold.

_Ryou? Is that my name?_ the smaller wondered briefly, obscurely, feeling less like 'Ryou' and more like the boy in the desert- desperately searching for-

"Nakhti?" Ryou doubted suddenly his vision of the boy's killer, for lack of a motive-

Bakura glanced down at the boy on his arm, whose eyes were strangely green and full of confusion and worry. The name was surreal and foreign, but it made a kind of sense, deep somewhere. And Bakura swallowed hard, recalling vaguely the unfullfilled pain and hatred that came before Ryou's love- and fire, and blood, and most of all _regret_...

"I know that name," came a hoarse hiss. Ryou's tore his eyes away, turning his gaze to the honey-skinned boy rising from the sand.

"Malik- Malik, stop- what's wrong?" Isis flung her arms around one of her brother's slim arms and was immediately flung off.

"Away, priestess," Malik said darkly, flexing that arm as though burnt and then hissing softly, "So weak..."

"Malik!" Isis struggled against Rashid's strong hold, tears pouring freely from her wild eyes. "Little brother! Let me help!"

Like a snake, Malik turned, eyes narrow and grinning, all feral and poisonous. "Priestess..._ I_ am the only one with the power to help him."

Bakura's hold on him seemed to get tighter, even as Ryou struggled to get down, "You! You are..."

"I am?"

Rashid stared with undisguised horror. This tone of voice- this expression-

"You're Ishtar," Ryou said strongly, feeling an incredible surge of anger and flinging himself to the ground, managing even to land on his feet.

Bakura flailed, worried beyond comprehension, and slipped from their camel; he held the reigns with one hand, and reached for Ryou with the other, thought the thin, white-haired boy was moving away. "Ryou..."

"Get out! Go away!" Ryou shouted, his hands balled into fists.

Yami held his breath- such force! Such unadulterated strength. Where had it come from? He gripped Yugi, who struggled half-heartedly, as though wishing to help his friend of several years, but gave over to the comfort the former pharaoh's arms offered. "Ryou is scary," he whispered.

Yami nodded.

"I know what you're doing," Ryou said, some of the courage draining from him, as the crisp, lavender eyes of Malik's former spirit stared him down from Malik's weary body.

"Little oracle, I almost had _you_, too," Ishtar ran Malik's hands down the boy's own torso. "Had there been time enough. I had this one _so_ many times when he was simply the house of Ptah."

_Just a house?_ "Get out of him, he's not a pawn. He was never meant to be a pawn!" Ryou knew, deeply, that he was referring to the past far more than the present.

"What's that, Miu-sher?" Ishtar blinked innocently, casting a sidelong look to Bakura and then Isis. "Weren't you all pawns?"

"Get _out_ of him!"

Ishtar snarled, "I'll get out when I damn well please, insolent child! The faster if you tell me where the Ptah is hidden."

"Forget it," Ryou snarled in return, surprising himself, "Snake! Get out of Malik, _stop_ this insanity!"

Yugi squirmed, afraid to act, afraid not to; even as Ryou's eyes blazed and a heavy weight descended on the group. It seemed to balance the power, and seemed also to hold him in place, gripping his other half's arm.

For once, they both were powerless- no longer the center of the storm. But Yami wondered, _Could he handle it? Or shouldn't I be surprised that Ma'at goes on?_

"Not until I get what I want," Ishtar, in Malik's brass voice shouted, "I failed once, and I won't fail again."

"I won't help you," Ryou's hands balled in and out of fists, as though he had had this conversation before. But inklings were only that, and he found his confidence wavering yet more.

"Then this vessel will die again," Ishtar smiled prettily, tearing a series of tiny daggers from the boy's jewelry as easily as if he himself had put it there. Chances are, he had. Ryou gasped, stepping back, though there was an arm's length between them. "Tell me, little oracle, or I'll kill this body the same way I killed He Who Bring Back the Distant One."

Ryou's eyes seemed to immediately water, watching Ishtar's fistful of knives press into the flesh of his neck- of _Malik's _neck.

_Near the King, an oasis, and a tiny, perfect boy, blessed by the soft and unobtrusiveness of Hathor..._

Ryou shook off the vision, shocked he was able to, but then spat, "Ini-heret. _You_ killed him." He was tempted to look at Bakura, for whatever reason, but knew better than to take his eyes off of the possessed boy.

"And who is that? A priest, a fragment?" the tiny knives bit into Malik's neck and Ryou understood. Ryou understood every ounce of Malik's insanity.

Ishtar was mad.

"You killed the boy who was born to save the king," Ryou grimaced, almost enjoying the wavering expression on Ishtar's face, "The king... who was born to seal the _dark games_."

Ishtar snarled, relieving a small bit of pressure from Malik's tan neck, "To seal such power! Impossible, foolish _nonsense!_ No one can stop me from my new world."

"A god could stop you," Ryou said softly.

"I _am a god!_" Ishtar shrieked, driving the knives into Malik's neck.

Rashid lunged, tripping over Isis' dress; Yugi screamed, even as Yami shouted and Bakura made a dash forward. Not one eighth of an inch into the soft flesh of Malik's neck, Ryou surged forward with blazing green eyes, knocking the protruding knives from Malik's throat with one hand and throwing himself onto Ishtar with all of his weight.

"Balance!" and the weight that held the group in place settled firmly, shackle-like, across the young men and young woman, till all that was left in their power to do was watch in horror as Ryou squeezed Malik's neck, blood slipping between his fingers.

"Get off," Ishtar choked, unable to move beneath Ryou's _Ba-_ the incredible weight of an entire, realized soul.

"Balance," Ryou murmured, green eyes boring into Ishtar's, "One body, one soul. The will of the gods is realized through balance, _not_ creation. _Ptah_ is power, _I_ am _sight_! _You_ are the imbalance!"

Ishtar shook, spluttering and losing his grip in Malik's soul. Some terrible force, not strong at all but pervasive and unrelenting was tearing apart the bonds he had sewn into the boy he had called his own.

_His own._

"Get off me, Oracle! He belongs to _me_! He has _always_ belonged to me!"

"You are nothing but a fragment, _you have no power here_."

The green of Ryou's eyes was blinding and Ishtar flailed, grabbing Ryou's thin wrists in a weak grip. "I- I _am!_ He _belongs _to me! I won't let go...!"

But he could feel the shredding fibers of their connection as surely as he felt the Ryou's hands slowly strangle the breath from him. "Nothing belongs to scavengers, snake. _Crocodile_."

"I am Seth, god of the desert-" Ishtar shrieked, eyes wild.

"I am Ma'at," Ryou said softly, tightening his grip, "the scales."

A strangled sound issued from Ishtar's throat, and Ryou whispered, watching the dark spirit flee, "He belongs to _me_."


	21. TwentyOne

**(KAI)** Thoth - Pronounced 'Taught' (tot).  
I wrote chapter 20 quaking with excitement... at 21, I grew antsy.  
I'm cheering you on, Ryou.  
You're really coming into your own.

* * *

**Who I Am  
21**

A moment passed, like a grain of sand in an impossibly constricted hourglass. Ryou blinked, once, and felt Malik's soul settle into place in the same breath he felt the weight inside him lift and disperse, like vapor, or the smoke of Kashmir incense. A small sound brought his attention into focus, sharply, and down.

"V-Vah..." startled violet eyes watched him, trusting but terrified.

Ryou loosed his fingers, almost all at once, and found them to be tingling and curled, hard to flex and almost numb. Across the pinpricks of red, where the needle-sharp daggers had bit into Malik's flesh, there were deep cerise and lavender marks across the tan of the boy's neck. Quickly, Ryou moved off, and Malik immediately turned on his side and coughed, violently.

Underneath the pounding in his ears, Ryou could still hear Malik's plaintive and painful hacks, "Vah, vah," he repeated, shaking.

He was dazed. Ryou looked with unseeing ayes all around; the stretch of sand, all around them, closing in beneath waves of hot air. The back of his neck was starting to burn. He wavered on his feet, unthinking for a moment. _Who am I? What does that even mean?_

"What just happened?" he asked softly, facing no-one._ What am I? That's the real question._

Bakura eased himself toward Ryou, watching warily the way the slight boy turned jerkily, particularly a bit left of the direction they'd been traveling. Before he could lay hands on him, Ryou darted a bit, eyes wide. "There's a priest; I can't remember his name. I don't know his name. No. His name is Seto. No, Seth. Damn!"

Bakura reeled, glancing at Rashid questioningly. Isis met his gaze; both of the older members of their team were hovering over Malik, who was wheezing and staring into space. The former spirit frowned deeply; it seemed like every time he turned around, someone was falling apart, weak and preposterously. Ryou was stumbling away, still mumbling, and the other followed him, as quietly as he could.

_I think he's in shock. I don't quite understand why... and I want to know what the hell that force was. _

"Who's Seto?" Ryou whirled, eyeing Bakura with brown eyes dotted with sharp, deep-colored pupils, "Do we know a Seto?" Ryou bit his thumb, running the other shaking hand through his mussed and dusty hair. "Who's 'we'? Ha, okay..."

Yami watched the hysteric oracle weave across the sand a ways away and clung to Yugi so hard that the boy gasped, breathless. "Yami, are you all right?"

"I'm worried."

"You're always worried," Yugi said pointedly and relaxed against the chest that had been pressed against him enough for him to fairly well forget where he ended and Yami began.

The other was staring at Malik, who currently was making his way into Rashid's lap, clinging to his neck and crying. "Shouldn't I be?"

"I hope Ryou can fix him. Or... heal him. Or something," Yugi stuttered out, flinching from the image, somewhat ashamed.

The arms went tighter, "I hope so, as well."

It had taken a few minutes, but Rashid had gotten Malik to talking, however difficult it was to understand. Isis was patting the boy's back, alternately rubbing and reaching up to pet his hair. Her eyes welled, but the tears did not fall.

"Are you all right, sweetie?" her hands trailed through locks that had never been soft.

"I h-hurt," Malik whispered, clutching the end of Rashid's hair in one shaking hand, "Everything is- it's cold. I feel empty, clean..."

Rashid was staring at Isis, who was staring at Malik until she caught the older man's eyes. "Is he?"

"I don't know," Rashid closed his eyes, trying to feel, trying to _know_. It didn't always work; now was one of those times. Malik only shuddered a few more times and went limp in his arms, head tucked against him.

"Rashid-vah..."

Isis winced.

Ryou was tottering over, eyes bloodshot, but a warm brown color that didn't make Isis' heart skip beats. In tow, was Bakura, whose eyes were narrow, and whose mouth was set in frustration. "It means Beloved, doesn't it? Malik?"

The pale-haired boy dropped to his knees, and as he did, one knee of his jeans split in one frayed smile. He didn't seem to notice, nor did his eyes flicker to Bakura, was was wearily settling beside him, occasionally watching Yami and Yugi with unrestrained jealousy. They had gathered the camels together, and were now talking quietly, absentmindedly holding hands.

Malik was nodding, and Bakura let his attention wander back. "That's what it means, right? Beloved, my beloved. I can remember- no, it hasn't happened yet."

Ryou let out a strangled giggle, grabbing Malik's hand, "I feel so lightheaded, you know? Remembering something that hasn't happened yet. Maybe it's not me who's remembering."

Malik nodded numbly, idly toying with Rashid's loose sleeve. "I see."

"Yes, you ..." Ryou blinked several times before whispering, "You were there."

Bakura stiffened at the look Malik shot his _Hikari_, but leaned in to listen, resisting the urge to reach over and touch the smaller boy. Anywhere- the shoulder, knee, hip..._ I miss you_.

Ryou's eyes were shut tightly, "Because... Ishtar was a fragment of you. But before he hid in you, he was a priest... and that priest... what happened to him? Something... a soul split apart? Ow!"

Bakura grabbed out before thinking of his hand, or its shooting out to grasp Ryou's shoulder. From that shoulder, Ryou's hand was clasped to his forehead, where his brow furrowed beneath a colossal pain and worry. "_Yadonushi_? What's wrong?"

"Gods- I'm surrounded by gods, and- and we're heading for them," Ryou hissed, leaning into the touch despite his the misgiving he held firmly in his mind. "I was wrong about everything. The books, the robes... we never needed them."

Bakura peered at him, frowning and wondering if Ryou had, in some fashion, meandered off the deep end. "_Hikari_?"

"I'm so tired," he moaned, and Malik tugged his hand.

"There's one more," the violet eyes that stared at him were consumed by a tiny fire, almost lost in the shallow pale of lavender.

Rashid sighed deeply, "Ishtar-nah."

"Ishtar-nah," Malik repeated softly.

"One more we never needed?" Bakura asked, rather lost.

"One more we were wrong about," Ryou said, his hand slipping down to fall in his lap.


End file.
